Berlin.- Venezuela and Paraguay are Latin America’s most corrupt countries while Uruguay and Chile are transparency leaders, says a report by the German NGO Transparency International (TI) released Tuesday, EFE reports.
The TI’s 2013 edition on its traditional corruption perception index (CPI) ranks a region where despite stable results, stresses overall setbacks in Central America.
"What’s most obvious are the falls of Central America as a bloc. One explanation is that organized crime groups need corruption to smuggle drugs, weapons and people," TI Americas director Alejandro Salas told Efe.
In his view, those organizations and their conflicts lead to a systematic "wear and tear" on the region whose countries had the most striking falls in ranking: Guatemala, Panama, Dominican Republic and Honduras.
On a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very transparent), Uruguay leads in transparency with 73, followed by Chile (71), Puerto Rico (62), Costa Rica (53), Cuba (46), Brazil (42) and El Salvador (38).
At Transparency’s tail end figure Venezuela (20), Paraguay (24), Honduras (26), Nicaragua (28) and Guatemala (29), the most corrupt.
Among the TI annual ranking of nations, in decreasing order of transparency, figure Peru (38), Colombia (36), Ecuador (36), Panama (35), Argentina (34), Bolivia (34), Mexico (34) and Dominican Republic (29).
In the TI’s 2012 report Dominican Republic was ranked 118 among 165 nations.