Transparency International, the global anti-corruption non-governmental organisation whose headquarters are in Berlin, has produced its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2018.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories by the levels of corruption that various interviewed experts and businesspeople believe their public sectors to have, thus making it useful to money-laundering reporting officers who wish to gauge the 'country risk' posed by customers, not least politically exposed persons or PEPs. The index employs a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being highly corrupt and 100 being very clean. More than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on this year’s CPI, with an average score of just 43 - the same as the previous year. 

The top ten jurisdictions for 2018 were, in descending order, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Holland, Canada and Luxembourg. Those of 2017 consisted of the same countries in slightly different places: New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, Canada, Luxembourg and Holland. Transparency International awards joint places to some countries, appointing Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland as joint third with a joint score of 85 out of 100. Notable entries include the United Kingdom in 11th position with a score of 80, which previously shared the eighth slot with Canada, Luxembourg and Holland with scores of 82 each.

At the bottom, as usual, are the poorest and/or most war-torn countries on earth. As before, Somalia is last, with Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, North Korea, the Sudan, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Afghanistan, Libya and Burundi also in the bottom ten.

The United States has been slipping down the poll in recent years, now occupying 22nd place, just below France and just above the United Arab Emirates. Last year it was ranked 16.

Offshore centres include Singapore (joint 3rd); Luxembourg (joint 9th); Hong Kong (14th); Barbados (25th); the Seychelles (28th); Qatar (33rd); Cyprus (38th); St Vincent and the Grenadines (41st); Malta (51st - a very sharp decline over recent years); Vanuatu (64th); Panama (93rd); and Bahrain (99th).

The United Arab Emirates is listed at 23rd. Only last summer, Transparency International published a communiqué in which it slated Dubai for having "become an open market for money laundering and a safe haven for the corrupt." According to reports that TI had received, the United Arab Emirates’ secretive and weakly regulated financial sector and "unaccountable high-end real estate market" had combined to offer the world’s criminals a range of services.

Transparency International believes that Dubai’s property sector lacks "enforcement and oversight" and that this is providing a safe haven for vast amounts of dirty money. It also avers that people who are subject to international sanctions are moving to the safety of Dubai, with professional criminals and politicians flocking there to purchase property. A report issued in June last year called Sandcastles states: "While an estimated $2.1 trillion is generated in illicit capital per year, less than 1% is seized. Of this, 30% of all criminal proceeds seized have historically been real estate. In this report, C4ADS [the US Centre for Advanced Defence Studies] identifies 44 properties worth approximately $28.2 million held directly by sanctioned individuals, and an additional 37 properties worth approximately $78.8 million within these individuals’ expanded networks."

Despite recent improvements, the Dubai Financial Services Authority completed only two investigations in the real estate sector last year and no enforcement action appears to have been taken there. Indeed, only 12 entities have actually registered with the DFSA – an alarmingly low figure that, according to TI, "raises red flags over whether Dubai takes its own regulations seriously."

The index also reveals that most countries are still failing to control corruption to a significant degree and that this is contributing to a crisis in democracy around the world. Countries with the least protection for press and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also tend to have the worst rates of corruption. Every week at least one journalist is killed in a country that is highly corrupt.