3 days after Santa Claus brought fancy present for all good children, and a birch for bad ones - or at least was supposed to -, on the 9th of December, 148 countries celebrate the International Anti-Corruption Day.
Most recent joiner is Uganda. In Europe, on occasion of this day, this year, Transparency International Hungary hosted a conference on youth integrity, urging participants to ask themselves “is it worth being honest?” - writes the trancperency.org.
Amabassadorsin Hungary sharing clear practice
Karin Olofsdotter, Ambassador of Sweden in Hungary spoke about how trust and transparency work in Sweden, where all citizen have right to any government document and it that way very high rate taxes are even accepted by the swedish population. Regarding corruption perception Sweden is the fourth cleanest country in the world.
Tove Skarstein, ambassador of Norway in Hungary, said that transparency of economical and political background is not only incentive for economy but also for society. In Norway , (the 5th less corrupt country in 2013 ranking) it is quite a shame for man on power to be caught for corruption.
Jonathan Knott, Ambassador of Great Britain in Hungary, estimates that transparency shall stimulate investments and employment. UK has the 14th place.
Dark clouds of corruption above Central-Europe
Hungary, where a long lasting, regular and systematic large scale fraud involving the tax authority has recently been enlightened by investigative journalists (atlatszo.hu) and a former employee of the organization, with support of student organization and Transparency International Hungary, with its 46th place on the list has a 55 CPI points that give quite a blurred picture.
However other former communist countries have even less transparency points, except for Slovenia, where situation is less cloudy than in Hungary.
József Péter Martin, Executive Director at Transparency International Hungary, places his trust in youth not yet corrupted.
CPI 2013
In 2013 more than two-thirds of countries surveyed scoring less than 50 out of 100 in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), meaning that they have a serious corruption problem.
CPI: This index is the leading global indicator of public sector corruption, scores countries on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is perceived to be highly corrupt and 100 is perceived to be very clean. Ranking 177 countries in 2013, TI published that less corrupt countries are New-Zealand and Denmark with a score of 91 from 100. As in 2012, last place is shared by Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia (score: 8).
source. MTI, Hungarian news agency and http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/cpi_2013_now_is_the_time_for_action
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