Report finds Israel one of the most corrupt among OECD countries

Transparency International, a UK-based organisation that campaigns against corruption, has ranked Israel at the lower end of the developed countries in terms of corruption. Out of the 34 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Israel ranked 23rd.

According to Israel’s Maariv newspaper, the report found that “corruption in the public sector in Israel is very common, as it ranks 36th out of the 177 countries assessed, with a score of 61 out of 100” in terms of corruption. Countries are measured according to a scale from 0 to 100, with those countries receiving lower scores perceived to be highly corrupt and those earning higher scores to be very clean.

Despite Israel’s low ranking among OECD countries, its level of corruption is slowly decreasing. According to the newspaper’s website, which published the details of the report, Israel ranked 39th in 2012, thus improving three places over the last year.

Transparency International, a UK-based organisation that campaigns against corruption, annually measures the corruption levels of 177 countries around the world at all levels. Its report is considered to be the most comprehensive in the world in this field.

The report lists the countries that are least corrupt first, so the further down a country is on the list, the more corrupt it is. This year, Denmark and New Zealand came on top of the list, both enjoying a score of 91, followed by Finland and Sweden in third place with a score of 89, then Norway and Singapore ranking fifth with a score of 86, while Switzerland came in the seventh place with 85, followed by the Netherlands with a score of 83.

At the other end of the spectrum, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia and Korea ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world.