Why It Matters
Rising corruption scores raise operational and legal risks for multinational firms, prompting tighter compliance programs and budget reallocations.
Key Takeaways
- •Average CPI score fell to 42 globally.
- •Two‑thirds of nations in widespread corruption zone.
- •Five countries above 80, half of decade's count.
- •U.S. CPI drops to 64, indicating rising risk.
- •Compliance teams should align anti‑corruption with fraud controls.
Pulse Analysis
The 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) underscores a worrying global shift: the average score has dropped to 42, and more than two‑thirds of nations now sit in the "widespread public‑sector corruption" band. This trend is not confined to traditionally high‑risk regions; even established democracies in Scandinavia and the Asia‑Pacific are seeing modest declines, suggesting that institutional resilience is eroding faster than anticipated. For investors and corporate strategists, the CPI offers a macro‑level risk barometer that can inform market entry decisions, supply‑chain assessments, and capital allocation.
From a compliance perspective, the CPI’s granular country scores are a practical tool for calibrating anti‑corruption controls. Because corruption risk often correlates with broader fraud exposure, integrating CPI data with internal fraud‑risk models can sharpen resource allocation, ensuring that high‑risk jurisdictions receive proportionally stronger monitoring, training, and due‑diligence efforts. Companies that treat the CPI as a static checklist miss an opportunity; instead, they should embed it in a dynamic risk‑assessment cycle that aligns with periodic reviews mandated by frameworks such as the U.S. Department of Justice’s effective compliance guidelines.
Policy shifts further amplify the urgency. The United States’ recent downgrade to a 64 score reflects a softening of FCPA enforcement and reduced funding for overseas civil‑society watchdogs, sending a permissive signal to multinational actors. As governments worldwide grapple with political turbulence, firms must anticipate tighter scrutiny from regulators and stakeholders alike. Proactive steps—such as bolstering third‑party vetting, enhancing whistle‑blower channels, and synchronizing anti‑corruption initiatives with broader ESG programs—will help mitigate the escalating risk landscape highlighted by the CPI.
Corruption Index: Yep, Things Are Bad
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index Shows Global Decline
Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index today, depicting a grim picture of corruption getting worse pretty much around the world. Two‑thirds of countries are now mired in a zone that Transparency International describes as “widespread public sector corruption” and even longstanding havens of clean governance are growing more rare.
Basically, if you want good news, please portal into some other timeline.
Transparency International releases its CPI every year right around now, ranking the world’s 182 countries on a scale of 0 to 100; the higher your score, the less corrupt you are. Ethics and compliance teams often use the CPI (and rival benchmarks out there) to get a baseline sense of the corruption risks your business operations will face around the world, so you can design your anti‑corruption policies and controls accordingly.
Our first helping of bad news is the big picture. The average score across all countries was a measly 42, and 122 countries scored somewhere below 50 — the zone that indicates “widespread public sector corruption,” according to Transparency International.
Source: Transparency International
Our second helping of bad news is the select number of large, modern democracies that typically score very well on the CPI. They’re going through some stuff too. Only five countries now score above 80, down from 12 one decade ago, and “recent slippage in high‑scoring democracies shows corruption risks can rise even where institutions once looked secure,” Transparency International said in a total buzzkill of a summary of this year’s findings.
So which countries are still scoring high for good government? All the usual suspects: Scandinavian countries, Singapore, New Zealand; the top 10 are in Figure 1, at right.
The bottom of the list is, unfortunately, all the usual suspects too: South Sudan (score of 9, which is up one point from last year), Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen, Libya. The rankings page for the CPI does let you study each country’s ranking in depth, to see how it’s changed over time and what the recent anti‑corruption headlines are there.
The United States, Going Down
The United States scored a 64 on the CPI this year. That’s down 1 point from 2024, and snaps a recent streak of America improving its CPI score in the early 2020s.
“Geez, I wonder why. Did we go through some tectonic political shift in 2025 that might explain this?”
Let’s not mince words here. The long arc of anti‑corruption in the United States has suffered two downward pulls in the last 15 years. One happened during the first Trump Administration, and the other started last year with the second. President Trump’s proclivity for corrupt government, along with Republican lawmakers’ refusal to hold him accountable for abuses in office, are behind this. Figure 2, below, tells the rather depressing tale.
Source: Transparency International
Specific examples of Trump’s corruption are numerous. We could point to the $500 million deal he signed with UAE officials to take a stake in his family’s cryptocurrency venture; or the Administration dropping corruption cases against FIFA officials after FIFA awarded Trump a peace prize; or Trump giving pardons to folks like Changpeng Zhao, the former head of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who copped to fraud charges and then became enmeshed in the Trump family’s crypto business.
Transparency International even singled out the United States in this wincing but entirely fair paragraph:
“The United States (64) government’s decision to temporarily freeze and then degrade enforcement of its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — a key anti‑corruption law that prohibits corporate bribery of foreign officials — sends a dangerous signal that bribery and other corrupt practices are acceptable. At the same time, U.S. aid cuts to funding for overseas civil‑society groups that scrutinise their governments has undermined anti‑corruption efforts around the world. Political leaders in various countries have also taken this as a cue to further target and restrict independent voices, such as NGOs and journalists.”
None of this is news to corporate compliance officers, of course; although if you’re a foreign business working in the United States, it’s a reminder that perhaps you should strengthen your anti‑corruption controls here since Uncle Sam corruption risk is going up. Sigh.
Putting the CPI to Good Use
Despite today’s report primarily confirming what we already know, compliance officers can still put its information to good use.
First, let’s remember that corruption risk generally correlates to fraud risk writ large — and while management teams might kvetch about your budget requests for corruption laws that aren’t much enforced, they will listen when you talk about how anti‑corruption policies and controls can help to prevent embezzlement, bid‑rigging, product diversion, and other financial risks too.
So the CPI can be a tool to help you and your company’s anti‑fraud team allocate resources wisely, as much as it’s a tool for you fighting anti‑corruption risks all by your lonesome. Indeed, I’d even say you’re making a mistake if you don’t collaborate closely with anti‑fraud teams at your organization.
Plus, while the Justice Department’s guidelines for effective compliance programs never expressly say, “Thou shalt use the CPI or related corruption indicators,” they do say that companies need to refresh their assessment of compliance risks from time to time:
Is the risk assessment current and subject to periodic review? … Has the periodic review led to updates in policies, procedures, and controls? Does the company have a process for tracking and incorporating into its periodic risk assessment lessons learned either from the company’s own prior issues or from those of other companies operating in the same industry and/or geographical region?
You’ll never be able to answer those questions well without at least some externally provided data and context. The CPI is one such resource.
No, you don’t need to take the CPI findings (or those of any other corruption index) as gospel. For example, you shouldn’t say, “Oh crap, the rating for Zambia fell by 2 points, therefore we automatically need to increase our compliance spending there by 5 percent!” These indices aren’t supposed to be magic formulas to guide your budget priorities.
They simply exist to help you put your corruption risks around the world into context. They can give a baseline sense of “normal” risk in various parts of the world and then you can undertake a more thoughtful, country‑specific analysis to decide what you need to change, if anything.
Bottom line: you’ll probably need to change something, because corruption risk is getting worse.
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