Is Ukraine the most corrupt country in the world? No, that's not true: Ukraine ranks among the top third most corrupt nations in the world in terms of perceptions of public sector corruption, and yet it ranks above 54 countries in one leading corruption index and above 61 countries in a second index.
The story appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on October 28, 2023. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, says in comments translated into English from Slovak by Lead Stories staff:
Ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world. Information about terrible things appears..
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
Ukraine is tied, together with six other countries, including Mongolia and the Philippines for the 116th place in Transparency International´s Corruption Perception Index, which covers 180 countries worldwide. Ukraine´s score in the index, which measures the perceived level of corruption in the public sector on a scale of 0-100, where zero being highly corrupt and 100 being very clean, is 33. Countries with the worst scores include Russia, Mexico and Uzbekistan.
Similarly, in the Global Corruption Index, which uses both subjective and objective indicators from international entities, Ukraine ranks 126th, one place above Russia. Belarus, for instance, ranks 135th. Syria is the lowest-ranked country in 196th place, in the index provided by Global Risk Profile.
