When more than 800 business experts in 15 emerging-market countries were asked recently to identify the most flagrant bribe-payers in richer nations seeking contracts, Russian and Chinese companies emerged at the top of the list, according to a report this week from Transparency International, an independent anticorruption organization. Speaking at a news conference in Paris on Tuesday, Peter Eigen, chairman of the organization, said that in dealing with emerging-market countries, the Russians and Chinese were "using bribes on an exceptional and intolerable scale." Taiwan and South Korea were close behind, said the survey, conducted for Transparency International by the Gallup International Association. But perhaps more surprising, in the view of Transparency International, was the perception that anti-bribery laws in the United States and other industrial nations were apparently not deterring bribe-payers from multinational companies based in the West and Japan. In the survey, the names of 21 industrial countries were given to business and banking leaders in emerging-market nations for comment and ranking. On a scale of 1 to 10 - with 1 being the most prone to bribery and 10 the least - the United States got a score of 5.3, the same rating as Japan. The "cleanest" countries, though not perfect, were Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. Singapore, and most companies in Europe, were considered less corrupt than their American counterparts. Bribing foreigners to gain business has been against the law in the United States since 1977 under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which groups most industrial countries, introduced a worldwide convention against bribery three years ago. Transparency International, whose founders are former World Bank officials, introduced the "bribe payers' index" in 1999 in order to balance its older "corruption perception index." That index routinely cited developing countries as the most corrupt in the eyes of international business analysts. The reaction from those developing countries often was a countercharge that somebody has to offer or agree to pay bribes for corruption to take place. It was the strong message that Jerry Rawlings, who was president of Ghana, brought to the United Nations in a General Assembly speech two years ago, in which he accused the rich nations of creating the corruption in Africa that they then criticized. Both indexes from Transparency International measure only the perceptions of those engaged in business around the world who have experience in dealing with bribery and other irregular or illegal transactions. No attempt is made to quantify corruption, which even international organizations like the World Bank or International Monetary Fund find difficult to calculate with certainty. In its new bribe-payers report, released on Tuesday, Transparency International said the most bribery appeared to take place in the construction and military sectors, where government officials can exert pressure on foreign companies to pay bribes or lose contracts. Agriculture was the least likely economic sector to be affected, the survey found, although it was also not free of bribery. No companies are identified in the new report. The 835 business experts interviewed between December 2001 and March 2002 by Gallup organizations in emerging market economies were in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand. The experts included senior executives in multinational and domestic companies, chartered accountants, chamber of commerce leaders, bankers and lawyers. In some cases, the countries they represented were both receivers and sellers of goods and services in developing economies. The survey of business leaders found that bribery was also prevalent in domestic transactions in these countries. Transparency International, based in Berlin and calling itself a coalition against corruption, has chapters in countries around the world and is supported by grants from governments, foundations and corporations. A copy of the index is online at www.transparency.org.:
