Latvia more corrupt than Belarus?

Lithuania and Latvia moved up while Estonia dropped down a notch on Transparency International's corruption perception index, but the northernmost Baltic state remains cleaner in the eyes of its citizens than its southern neighbors do in theirs.

The index, compiled each year by the Berlin-based global corruption watchdog, measures perception of corruption based on the results of 15 different surveys of residents, businessmen, analysts and others in more than 100 countries.

"It is important to emphasize that it is only a snapshot and covers barely half of more than 200 sovereign nations in the world," said Transparency International Chairman Peter Eigen at the release of this year's index Aug. 28.

Estonia dropped a notch from the 2001 results to 29th out of 102 countries but remained one of the highest-ranked ex-communist countries.

Lithuania ranked 36th, up two spots from 38th in 2001, and tied with Belarus, South Africa and Tunisia.

Latvia brought up the rear in 52nd place, which it shared with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Morocco and Sri Lanka. Latvia was ranked 59th in 2001.

Finland led the survey as the least corrupt country followed by Denmark, New Zealand and Iceland. Bangladesh was last.

Though the index only measures public perception of corruption, the results offer a useful glimpse into the real situation and should be taken seriously, said Aleksandras Dobryninas, president of Transparency International's Lithuanian bureau.

"Image is very important for a country. International investment can depend on it. So Lithuanian politicians have to take these indexes seriously," he said.

Lithuania's main problems lie in administrative corruption, Dobryninas said. A survey conducted by the bureau last year found that more than 37 percent of those questioned had paid bribes in the past year.

Respondents identified traffic police, tax authorities and customs bureaus as among the most corrupt.The best remedy, Dobryninas said, requires eliminating bureaucracy and educating civil servants about business ethics.

But he added that because the Transparency index is based on perception, actual corruption levels can be difficult to gauge and are sometimes even harder to compare.

Belarus, which shares 36th place with Lithuania, is far above other C.I.S. countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and, in some polls, even outperforms Lithuania.

"But one has to consider whether this rating has a lot to do with the lack of a free market mentality and how used people are there to official misbehavior," Dobryninas said, adding that a bribe that would be considered corrupt in the West might be seen as normal business in Minsk.

The perception of Latvia as the most corrupt among the Baltic countries stems from perceived political corruption, experts say. But Valts Kalnins, a political scientist who worked on a recent Soros Foundation report on state corruption, said moves by the government to establish a new anti-corruption agency could make people more optimistic.

After months of delays in which the top candidate, the deputy chief of Latvia's economic police, had to withdraw over allegations that he himself was involved in a conflict of interest, the government finally appointed lawyer Janis Jonass to the job.

Estonia's rating is higher than that of its Baltic neighbors and all ex-communist countries save Slovenia, which finished in 27th place on the 2002 index.

Inesa Voika, president of Latvia's Transparency International branch, speculated that this could stem from the overall attitude of Estonians toward government.

"Estonians are a bit more Western in their thinking, they expect government to do less for them than Latvians and Lithuanians do, so they see less official corruption," she said.

But Trinn Reinsalu, manger of the Tallinn-based anti-corruption Jaan Tonisson Institute, said bribe-taking and other conflicts of interest were still a problem on the municipal level.

"If local governments had been taken into account, our index would have been worse," the Baltic News Service quoted her as saying.