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The Week in Germany: Business and Technology

October 6, 2006

Germany Does Well in International Bribery Ranking

German companies operating abroad are among the least corrupt in the world, according to the latest global rankings on bribery released by anti-corruption organization Transparency International.

While this may be good news for Germany, the bad news is that there is still too much bribery overall, the Financial Times Deutschland reported on Wednesday.

Germany came in a respectable seventh out of 30 countries ranked in the so-called "Bribe Payers Index". The "cleanest" country was Switzerland, followed by Sweden and Australia in second and third place. Germany came in just after the UK, in sixth place, but before the United States, in ninth place, and France, in 15th place. Turkey, Russia, China and India, in that order, came in last.

Hansjörg Elshorst, director of TI's Germany section, described the German result as solid. "You don't have to be a world champion in bribery to maintain the position of world export champion in ever more competitive global markets," he said in Berlin on Wednesday.

The Bribe Payers Index is based on a survey of 11,000 businesspeople from 125 countries. In an attempt to shed light on the supply side of corruption, they were asked to reveal to what extent foreign firms provided bribery payments in their country.

Despite Germany's comparatively "clean" score TI still sees problems with corruption and bribery in all of the countries surveyed. "There are no winners," said Elshorst. French and Italian companies were amongs the "worst offenders" in Africa.

But, partly due to lack of tip-offs from abroad, domestic companies are hardly prosecuted for corrupt practices overseas. For this reason, TI has been demanding for years that a central collecting place for all allegations of corruption be established. Companies also must try harder to adopt existing measures and implement them.

Uniform anti-corruption guidelines exist for all member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. But as long as countries like Russia, China and India fail to adopt such guidelines themselves, very little progress will be made, TI cautioned, adding that they should adopt the OECD rules.

Elshorst also pointed out that TI is extremely concerned about Turkey's 27th place ranking, which begs the question how seriously this OECD member is taking the anti-corruption guidelines. Elshorst recommended that German Chancellor Angela Merkel raise the issue during her recent visit to Turkey which began on Thursday.

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