Transparency International ranks the UK as 10th least corrupt country in the world

UK ranks 10<sup>th in the list of least corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International. The non-governmental organisation that monitors and publicises corporate and political corruption, pointed out the same in its annual global review of corruption.

According to the watchdog's Corruption Perceptions Index 2015, UK scored 81 points in 2015, three more than in 2014, indicating that British public officials are considered to be among the most honest government officials in the world and were seen as least likely to take a bribe.

Britain has entered the top 10 list for the first time in eight years, after reaching a low of 20th position in 2010. Robert Barrington, director at Transparency International said that "good rhetoric" from the UK government on fighting corruption helped it to attain the higher ranking. However, he added that there were areas such as stopping money laundering, cleaning up politics and improving government openness, where UK still had to improve upon.

"Britain has a Prime Minster who is talking a good game on anti-corruption with plans for a global summit on it in May. Whether he delivers on that remains to be seen", Barrington added.

Perceptions of public sector corruption across 168 countries were included in this index, which was based on expert opinion on the subject. While countries where the public can hold their leaders to account could score more on this index, which had points between 0 to 100, nations that had high levels of bribery, lack of punishment for the corrupt and public institutions that failed to cater to citizens' needs, ranked low.

The index with the top 10 nations along with their previous scores:

While the countries whose rankings deteriorated in the past four years included Libya, Australia, Brazil, Spain and Turkey, the nations that improved the most include Greece, Senegal and UK. Other notable nations in this index was the US, which improved by one place to rank 16th, while China gained 17 places to stand at the 83<sup>rd position. France improved by three places to stand at 23rd, Spain moved higher by one position to rank at 36th and Italy gained eight places to stand as the 61<sup>st least corrupt nation in the world.