Transparency International

Experts explain the country’s slow progress by the lack of its leadership’s political will to fight corruption and a low level of trust in Ukrainian judges and prosecutors.

Ukraine ranked 130th among 180 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2017.

The annual report was released on Wednesday by Transparency International, Deutsche Welle reported.

The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

Ukraine improved its last year result by one point and got 30 points out of 100 possible. Next to Ukraine stand Gambia, Iran, Myanmar and Sierra Leone.

Meanwhile, Russia scored one point less and ranks 135th (29 points), Belarus – 68th (44 points), Poland – 36th (60 points). Thus, the CPI claims Ukraine is Europe’s most corrupt country after Russia.

Ukraine was able to achieve a slight improvement due to the fact that in 2017 the Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities (Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office and National Anti-corruption Bureau) forwarded to courts first corruption-related cases where the suspects were high-ranking officials.

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