Russian firms most likely to use bribes abroad

BRUSSELS - Companies based in Russia are perceived as being the most frequently engaged in bribing high-level politicians when doing business abroad, a survey released on Tuesday (9 December) - international anti-corruption day - reveals.

Transparency International's 2008 Bribe Payers Index (BPI) ranked 22 leading international and regional exporting countries according to the

tendency of their firms to use bribes abroad.

The 22 countries selected for the BPI account for around 75 percent of the total foreign direct investment outflows and export goods worldwide. The study was based on interviews with almost 3,000 senior business executives working in 26 countries.

It is not to be mixed up with the annual corruption index carried out by Transparency International in 180 countries, which measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country.

"The BPI provides evidence that a number of companies from major exporting countries still use bribery to win business abroad, despite awareness of its damaging impact on corporate reputations and ordinary communities," said Transparency International Chair, Huguette Labelle.

Of the 22 countries surveyed, Russia ranked last with a score of 5.9 on a scale from 1-10, where 1 is the most corrupt and 10 the cleanest, dropping below China (6.5), Mexico (6.6) and India (6.8) compared to 2006, when the last survey was carried out.

Belgium and Canada shared first place with a score of 8.8, followed by the Netherlands and Switzerland (8.7), while Italy scored the worst out of the EU countries surveyed, with 7.4.

The BPI distinguished between three types of bribery: high-level, bribery of low-level public officials to "speed things up" and the use of personal or family relationships to win public contracts.

Russia scored first in all these practices, followed by Mexico, India, China and Italy.

Belgian companies were not flawless, despite scoring low on bribing officials. Some 16 percent of respondents said that Belgian companies "often" or "almost always" used family or personal relationships to win public contracts.

The economic sectors most prone to bribery of public officials proved to be construction, especially when it involved public contracts, real estate, property development, oil and gas. Public works and construction companies were also most likely to exert undue influence on the policies, decisions and practices of governments.

The cleanest sectors in terms of bribery were identified as information technology, fisheries, banking and finance.

The study also explored the practice of state capture - a situation where the very framework governing a sector, or even the economy, is guided by a particular interest, rather than by the public interest.

Public works contracts or construction, oil and gas, mining, and real estate and property development were the sectors most likely to engage in practices of state capture.

Banking and finance was seen to perform considerably worse in terms of state capture than in public sector bribery, meaning it exerts considerable influence on the rules of the game. At the other end of the spectrum, agriculture, fisheries and light manufacturing are believed to be the sectors least likely to engage in state capture.