December 06-2013
The Islamic Republic continued to rank among the most corrupt regimes in the world in the annual corruption index issued Tuesday by the German-based Transparency International.
Iran ranked 144th out of the 177 nations charted this year. That means 81 percent of the countries listed were less corrupt than Iran. In the 11 years that Transparency International has rated Iran, a greater proportion of countries has been rated as more honest only one time, in 2009.
The accompanying table shows where Iran has ranked in each year
This year, five countries were ranked as equals to Iran in corruption: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Ukraine.
Within the region, however, Iran was just average. Of Iran’s seven land neighbors, four ranked as less corrupt than Iran (Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Pakistan) while three were rated as more corrupt (Turkmenistan, Iraq and Afghanistan).
Afghanistan was ranked at the very bottom, along with North Korea and Somalia.
The top-ranked countries in the world were Denmark and New Zealand, who tied with scores of 91 out of a possible 100.
Singapore was the highest ranked country outside the Western world, placing fifth with a score of 86.
Canada ranked ninth with a score of 81 and the United States was 19th with a score of 73.
The highest ranked Muslim-majority nation was the UAE in 26th place with a score of 69. The UAE, Qatar and Brunei were the only Muslim majority countries with scores above 50.
The index considers both political and business corruption. It is a composite index that combines several business and expert researcher studies. Since no country files statistical reports on their level of corruption, the studies are based on perceptions as reported, for example, by businessmen trying to conduct business in a country.
The full report is available on the web at http://www.transparency.org.