Corruption Index reflects Moldova’s disappointing response to corruption

“Corruption can be beaten if we work together. To stamp out the abuse of power, bribery and shed light on secret deals, citizens must together tell their governments they have had enough.” - José Ugaz, Chair, Transparency International

Transparency International launched today its annual Corruption Perceptions Index for 2015. Corruption is widespread. However, the number of countries which improved their CPI scores is higher than the number of those whose score decreased. With a rank of 103 out of 168 countries, the Republic of Moldova dropped two points to score 33 out of 100, indicating a widespread problem with perceptions of public sector corruption and continuing a decline from 2010.

The decline is reflective of the fall of three governments in the past year, multiple deficiencies in the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, the strategy for reforming the justice sector, and the EU – Moldova Association Agreement have decreased citizens’ faith in governments’ capacity to face corruption.

Still, considering the fact that many of the CPI sources did not manage to cover the last months of the year, which were marked by many alarming events, the drop in the 2015 CPI seems relatively slow.

As never before, the link between corruption and state capture has become visible. There have been many actions that have discredited the good intentions announced to the people and to development partners about the successive plans to fight corruption. These include the delay in the approval of a batch of laws regarding the system of integrity and the failure in taking a prompt action against those responsible for overseeing the security of the banking sector, who admitted the theft of US$1 billion.

The judicial system has also been compromised by the non-meritocratic promotion of judges and the selective justice applied to political competitors. The President denounced an attempt to blackmail him in order to name an unsuitable person as a candidate for the position of Prime-Minister. There were later suspicisons that a majority vote in parliament were manufactured to sabotage the vote for his candidate. The apeared in an obscure way Parliamentary majority sabotaged to vote the proposed by the President candidate.

Freedom of the press was also compromised as journalists were blocked at the headquarters of the Democratic Party and in the Parliament, limiting citizens’ access to objective information. There was also the speedy voting of the Government in the Parliament, without offering to the citizens the possibility of knowing ahead of time the names of the candidates to the public offices, their secret swearing in at midnight – all of these amplified the potests of the opposition parties and of the civil society.

During the protests on 24 January, which gathered a record number of citizens, the government received an ultimatum from the people which called for its resignationand new elections with a change in the way the president is elected.

Transparency International – Moldova wants to highlight to all decision-makers the fact corruptionis onthe increase, and that with all the signs of state capture noted, ignoring the requests of the protests could jeopardize Moldova’s path to European Union membership and undermine the democratic development of the country. It also heightens the prospect of more mass protests that could turn violent.

CPI is an aggregate index which reflects the level of corruption perception in different countries. The index is calculated using a scale from 0 to 100, where ‚0’ means total corruption and ‚100’ – total lack of corruption. The 2015 CPI is based on 12 data sources from internationally reputable institutions: Bertelsmann Foundation (Transformation Index), Economist Intelligence Unit (Country Risk Ratings); Freedom House (Nations in Tranzit); Global Insight (Country Risk Ratings); IMD World (Competitiveness Yearbook); Political Risk Services (International Country Risk Guide) World Bank Group (Country Policy and Institutional Assessment), World Justice Project (Rule of Law Index).

The 2015 CPI includes 168 countries, led by Danemark with a score of 91 points, Finnland (90 points) and Sweden (89 points), and ending with North Korea and Somalia (each 8 points). The biggest decliner is Brazil, whose score descreased 5 points compared to last year. Significant progress was registered in Mongolia and Guatemala..

Two-thirds of the countries included in the 2015 CPI scored below 50 points, which shows the existence of severe problems in the preventing and fighting this phenomenon. The medium score of the 2015 CPI for the EU countries is 65,5 points, and for the East Partnership countries - 34,7 points.

The details of Transparency International’s 2015 CPI are available at: www.transparency.org/surveys/cpi

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