I have no doubt that the individuals associated with Transparency International have a genuine interest in reducing bribery and corruption in the global marketplace.
Nevertheless, I have long had good-faith concerns (see prior posts here, here, here, here, here and here) about how TI goes about this task.
The latest example is TI’s recent “shaming report” (that is my term, TI technically calls its report “Exporting Corruption 2022 – Assessing Enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention“).
In an annual non-event, Transparency International (TI) released its so-called Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) (see here). The CPI “ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people. It relies on 13 independent data sources and uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.”
According to TI, the “data sources are collected by a variety of reputable institutions, including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum” and the “sources and surveys which make up the CPI are based on carefully designed and calibrated questionnaires, answered by experts and businesspeople.”
According to TI, this year’s CPI “reveals that corruption levels remain at a standstill worldwide” and “131 countries have made no significant progress against corruption over the last decade, and this year 27 countries are at a historic low in their CPI score.”
The CPI generates a lot of media coverage and is a popular tool for business organizations in ranking risk (and thus prioritizing compliance). However, for the reasons highlighted in this post compliance professionals should take the CPI with a grain of salt.
I have no doubt that the individuals associated with Transparency International have a genuine interest in reducing bribery and corruption in the global marketplace.
Nevertheless, I have long had good-faith concerns (see prior posts here, here, here, here, here and here) about how TI goes about this task. The latest example is TI’s recent “shaming report” (that is my term, TI technically calls its report “Exporting Corruption – Progress Report 2020″).
The Executive Summary states:
In an annual non-event, last week Transparency International (TI) released its so-called Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) (see here). The CPI scores 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people. 100 is very clean and 0 is highly corrupt.
According to TI, the CPI 2019 “reveals a staggering number of countries are showing little to no improvement in tackling corruption.”
The CPI generates a lot of media coverage and is a popular tool for business organizations in ranking risk (and thus prioritizing compliance). However, for the reasons highlighted in this post compliance professionals should take the CPI with a grain of salt.
About time, scrutiny updates, ripple, for the record, just saying, and for the reading and listening stack. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
About Time
After dinging companies for nearly 40 years for internal controls and risk management failures, the SEC names its first chief risk officer.
As highlighted in this prior post, if the SEC were an issuer there would be many books and records and internal controls issues within the organization.
