Most Corrupt Countries in the World

The governing party of Cambodia dissolved the main opposition party in 2017 and banned it for five years. The country is also knocked down for human trafficking. The State Department said the Cambodian government has not fully complied with the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” but is endeavoring to do so.

December 2018 elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were the country’s first electoral transfer of power in 59 years. Human trafficking is also common in the country, although the majority of trafficking is internal and perpetrated by groups outside the government’s control.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Demonstrations erupted in Haiti last fall as the scope of government corruption widened. One of the issues involves the misuse of at least $3 billion in funds over the past decade that were sourced through a discounted oil program operated by the PetroCaribe energy cooperative. Transparency International ranks Haiti as the second-most corrupt nation in the Western Hemisphere behind Venezuela.

President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow has held office since 2007. He won re-election in 2012 and 2017 with more than 97% of votes cast. The nation he leads suffers from rampant corruption in virtually every sector of the economy. Bribery is common in securing procurement contracts, and the nation’s public administration rests on patronage connections.

Angola is a member of OPEC and is said to hold proven reserves of some 9 billion barrels of oil and 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Angola’s Transparency International score improved by four points this year following efforts by President Joao Lourenco to fight corruption.

Chad has held democratic, but ostensibly flawed, elections since 1996. The country has suffered from attacks by terrorist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS in the Lake Chad region, resulting in a recent call from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for aid to more than 7 million displaced persons. Nepotism and cronyism are facts of life in Chad — one of the world’s poorest nations — because of weak rule of law. Anti-corruption legislation targets bribery and stipulates strong penalties but is not widely enforced.

Republic of the Congo, while not as well-endowed as Angola, has 1.9 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, most of them offshore. Corruption is rampant in the African nation, with almost every area of the economy affected. President Sassou Nguesso tightly holds power and government institutions are vulnerable to political interference and patronage. Though there are regulatory protocols addressing corruption, implementation is erratic.

Iraq’s record for transparency and combating corruption has been undistinguished, but Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has promised that his government will “put an end” to corruption in the same way the country overcame the forces of ISIS.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been in power since 2013, but his days as the country’s leader appear to be numbered amid allegations that he rigged the last election. He is being challenged by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has been formally recognized by the Trump administration as the country’s leader. In November, the country’s former treasury chief pleaded guilty to taking $1 billion in bribes.

Faustin Ndikumana, chairman of a civil rights group in Burundi, said last August that corruption is part of everyday life in the country and that being corrupt is no longer considered taboo.

Libya has struggled to regain civil peace since the fall of strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Warring militias “are the greatest threat for Libya” according to the head of the country’s national oil company, who added that this is true for the whole society, not just the oil industry.

War-torn Afghanistan improved its standing somewhat in the rankings this year but nearly half the country remains outside of government control. Partly that’s due to the success that extremist groups like the Taliban enjoy in recruiting new members and partly it’s because of highly visible government corruption and nepotism.

One of Africa’s smallest countries, Equatorial Guinea’s fortunes have fallen as revenue from its oil exports has declined. The country’s human trafficking problems are also getting worse, not better.

Two-thirds of the country’s population remain below the poverty line and the economy is based on cashews (80% of export revenue) and fishing. Its location has made Guinea-Bissau a haven for smuggling drugs into Europe. The country lacks even minimal standards for eliminating human trafficking, nor is the government trying to develop any.

Ruled for nearly 30 years by indicted war criminal Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s ongoing dispute with South Sudan has resulted in the displacement of more than 2 million people. The prime minister recently said that the country is making progress in holding accountable those responsible for corruption.

North Korea is a closed society completely dominated by the communist party. Transparency International gives the nation a score of 14 based on “widespread and enduring corruption across the country.” A BBC report said aid groups estimate that as many as 2 million people have died since the mid-1990s because of severe food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement.

Yemen is another country Americans have been told not to visit because of terrorism, civil unrest, and armed conflict. The nation at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula has been engulfed in civil war since 2011. The conflict has led to the destruction of infrastructure including housing, medical facilities, schools, and utilities. Even before the war, there were concerns about corruption. Conflicts-of-interest safeguards in Yemen were deemed “very weak,” according to a 2010 report by Global Integrity.

South Sudan, created in 2011 and one of the world’s newer nations, descended into civil war in 2013. That conflict has displaced some 4 million people. Media is tightly controlled in South Sudan and journalists risk arrest and possibly worse. State-owned South Sudan TV has little competition. Legal institutions in South Sudan are weak.

The Middle Eastern nation has been racked by civil war since the “Arab Spring” uprising in 2011. The conflict has killed 250,000 and created 5.6 million refugees. President Bashar al-Assad has used heavy-handed methods, including poison gas, against his own people to try and retain control of the country. Besides the human toll, the World Bank estimates the civil war has cost Syria about $226 billion in cumulative GDP losses from 2011 to 2016.

Somalia is a failed state because of civil war, Islamic extremism, and drought, and is at the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. The U.S. State Department has issued a “do not travel” advisory to the East African nation because of threats of crime, terrorism, and piracy. More than half of the country’s 15 million people live in poverty.