Norway has once again ranked as being one of the world’s least corrupt countries, but wound up as the most corrupt country in Scandinavia and the Nordic area. That may be because all of Norway’s biggest companies, in which the state government owns substantial stakes, have faced corruption charges.
“We’ve had some quite serious and big corruption scandals in Norway,” Guro Slettemark, secretary general of Transparency International Norge, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) after the organization released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (external link) on Wednesday. Yara International, Telenor, Statoil, Norsk Hydro and Kongsberg have all been among companies caught involved in corruption allegations, mostly for allegedly paying bribes.
Norway landed in sixth place on Transparency International’s list behind Denmark and New Zealand, which shared first place as the least corrupt ccountries in the world, and Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. The world’s most corrupt country was Somalia, followed by South Sudan, North Korea and Syria.
newsinenglish.no staff