CPI Stop Pretending Corruption Is National: It’s a Globalised System

Oliver Bullough [codastory.com] has posted the following, and it's worth a read...

Oliver Bullough says:-

Transparency International has published its annual Corruption Perceptions Index and, for once, I think this rather tiresome survey of how likely various countries’ public officials are to be crooked has something important to tell us.

• https://codastory.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2917466ad5ae7d0be32196119&id=4814147141&e=f34170a071

Generally speaking, the CPI spends its time informing us that poor countries have worse governance than rich countries, which is not a very useful insight.

What it fails to do is tell us that a significant reason for this fact is

• That rich countries make it very easy for poor countries’ rulers to steal from their subjects, obscure the theft, and spend the proceeds on property in Mayfair, Miami or St Moritz.

But I do think it’s important that, this year, influential Western countries are sliding down the rankings:

• The United States has dropped to its lowest-ever score and last year’s crackdown on independent media and judges haven’t even been reflected in that score yet. “We’re seeing a concerning picture of long-term decline in leadership to tackle corruption,” noted TI. “

Even established democracies, like the U.S., UK and New Zealand, are experiencing a drop in performance.

The absence of bold leadership is leading to weaker standards and enforcement, lowering ambition on anti-corruption efforts around the world.”

Hopefully, TI’s index and its grave conclusions will help galvanise opposition to the pro-oligarch policies that are infesting the world, and help to stave off oligarchical takeover in places that are still doing okay.

That is, I suppose, valuable.

Still, I haven’t changed my opinion that the Corruption Perceptions Index should be abolished.

It is absurd that:

Hong Kong is ranked as the 12th cleanest jurisdiction in the world,

While China — the country it exists to loot — is 76th.

Just as ridiculous is the position of

• The United Arab Emirates at 21st in the list, considering its growing role as a lynchpin of global kleptocracy, including from Russia (ranked a lowly 157).

The United Kingdom may have fallen to 20th but

• That is still far too high for a country that, by its own admission, launders a hundred billion pounds a year.
• https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/threats-2025/nsa-illicit-finance-2025
• That’s equivalent to the entire GDP of Kenya, which is down at 130 in the list.
• https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025/index/ken

You simply cannot understand corruption on a country-by-country basis because kleptocracy is a globalised phenomenon, and anything that suggests you can — particularly something so crude as a league table — is too misleading to be useful

THE ABOVE IS EXTRACTED FROM A PUBLIC NEWSLETTER ISSUED BY OLIVER BULLOUGH [CODASTORY.COM] – IM SHARING IT BECAUSE I SUPPORT HIS SENTIMENTS AND WE ALL NEED TO STOP TICKING BOXES