Not a great surprise in today’s Guardian as Duncan Campbell reports that the UK and the US should be ranked at the top of the most corrupt nations in the world.
“I would place the United Kingdom high on the list of most corrupt countries,” said John Christensen, formerly an adviser to the Jersey government and now director of the Tax Justice Network (taxjustice.net), speaking at the Economic Geography Research Group conference
The report criticises Transparency International’s insistence in focusing on developing countries and ignoring the use of tax havens by Western countries.
Transparency International, a pressure group campaigning against corruption, reinforced stereotypes by depicting African nations as the most corrupt, he said. By contrast, Mr Christensen said, many of the countries it identified as least corrupt were offshore tax havens, including major centres such as Singapore, Switzerland, Britain, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the United States, Belgium and Ireland.
According to TI it is a question of definition – corruption = “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. In my book that includes all of the above countries and moreso since they have far more power and capital than any country in Africa.
