The Republic of Moldova in 2017 scored a Corruption Perceptions Index of 31, ranking 122nd out of 180 countries. The index reflects the corruption perceptions in the public sector, being assessed on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 means highly corrupt, while 100 means very clean. In 2016, Moldova ranked 123rd out of 176 countries, with a score of 30, IPN reports.
The Corruption Perceptions Index 2017 (CPI 2017) was launched by Transparency International in Berlin on February 21. The rankings are topped by the New Zealand and Denmark, with a score of 89 and, respectively, 88. Syria, South Sudan and Somalia are at the opposite pole with 14, 12 and, respectively, 9. The average for the EU is 65.
Georgia ranks 46th (56), while Romania 59th (48). Ukraine comes behind Moldova on the 130th spot (30), while Russia ranks 135th (29).
Transparency International Moldova in a press release said that even if laws designed to strengthen the institutional corruption fighting framework were adopted in Moldova in 2017, their implementation is overdue. The functionality of the National Integrity Authority wasn’t ensured, the checking of property and personal interests being discredited. The Criminal Assets Recovery Agency also seems to be nonfunctional. Even if the National Integrity and Anticorruption Strategy was adopted almost a year ago, the monitoring of its implementation hasn’t been yet initiated.
Transparency International Moldova said that in 2017 rulers’ attempts to discredit the processes of preventing and fighting corruption and of legalizing ill-gotten gains and freeing from responsibility for offenses committed in the banking, insurance and capital sectors have intensified. Among these is the so-called bill on the legalization of capital and fiscal stimulation, the regulations concerning the granting of Moldovan nationality in exchange for alleged investments in state securities and on the realty market, the initiative to concede state securities by the National Bank of Moldova to investors that could have a dubious reputation and the contradictory bill on the decriminalization of economic offenses.
According to the organization, the rulers haven’t taken real measures to hold accountable the persons involved in the banking fraud and officials who allowed the fraud to be committed. The persecution of civic activists, whistleblowers, lawyers and judges continued. Loud cases continued to be held behind closed doors. The practice of initiating political cases against opponents at the local level has intensified. The provisions of the law on the protection of personal data were abused to hamper access to information of public interest. There were violated provisions concerning decisional transparency. The legal electoral framework was adjusted to the interests of the ruling party.
Transparency International Moldova notes that these practices reveal not the usual corruption reflected in the CPI, but rather high-level corruption, including political corruption, which led to the capturing of the state. Transparency International Moldova calls on the international institutions and the development partners to take attitude to the developments in the Republic of Moldova and to dissociate themselves from decision makers that compromised the European course by gradually imposing personalized punishments on these.
The CPI 2017 is calculated based on 13 studies conducted by notorious international organizations, including nine studies for the Republic of Moldova.
