By EDUARDO LACHICA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Some Asian countries are gaining notoriety for being sources as well as recipients of bribery aimed at capturing foreign business, a new survey has found.
In its first study of perceptions of the tendency of various countries' exporters to resort to bribery, Transparency International named China, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia as among the places where companies are seen to be most disposed to bribing senior public officials abroad. Transparency International is a Berlin-based private consortium of national and international organizations.
China, including Hong Kong, had a 3.1 score, the worst among the 19 leading exporters included in the survey. The fact that the survey lumped China and Hong Kong together may cause some heartburn in the special administrative region. Hong Kong prides itself on its vigilance against corruption.
Countries were rated on a scale in which 10 indicates a corruption-free image while zero means the perception of high levels of bribery. The survey, conducted by London-based Gallup International, reflects the perceptions of 770 executives and professionals in 14 emerging markets.
U.S.'s Rank
This is a "very sorry showing" for some Asian countries that have tended to blame images of corruption on Western bribe-giving, said Frank Vogl, the vice chairman of Transparency International.
The U.S., for many years the only country that explicitly prohibited its citizens from bribing foreigners in pursuit of business, ranked only in the middle of the scale, along with Germany, which for years resisted criminalizing such practices. Both the U.S. and Germany scored 6.2, or just a few notches better than Singapore (5.7) and Japan (5.1). Sweden posted the best score (8.3), followed by Australia and Canada, which were rated 8.1.
The relatively low U.S. score "underlines the fact that unless you have the same rules for everybody, even U.S. companies may be willing to take risks because other companies are doing it," Mr. Vogl said. So far, 34 countries have signed on to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development anticorruption convention that requires signatories to adopt statutes equivalent to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
New Zealand Resists
Transparency International simultaneously released its standard demand-side corruption index, which ranks countries according to perceptions of their resistance to bribe-taking. As in previous years, New Zealand topped all Asian-Pacific countries as the least corrupt, followed by Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong. Malaysia was ranked in the middle of an expanded list of 99 countries. South Korea, the Philippines, China, Thailand and India placed lower down the scale, while Indonesia ranked nearly last with a 1.7 rating, along with Azerbaijan.
Denmark scored a perfect 10, as it did last year. Finland ranked next, followed by New Zealand, Sweden, Canada and Iceland.
Transparency International calls this index, now in its fifth year, a poll of polls, since it is based on as many as 17 different surveys by 10 different organizations.
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