Governments Fail to Curb Corruption in Defence: Survey

He further informed that courruption can be crucial as troops may carry equipment that doesn't work, which is wasteful and threat to life.

He also said, “Particularly at times of austerity, the idea that it is somehow acceptable that there should be corruption in defence because it has always been so is just an outrageous suggestion,” as reported by Reuters.

All the leading arms exporters, Russia, China and Israel, were considered to be inflicted with high risk of corruption in their defence system. The high risk category among the top arms importers countries included, India, Singapore, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Thailand.

The survey said that nine countries which include Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Egypt are at ‘critical risk’ of corruption in their defence sector for basic accountability measures to curb corruption.

The countries that are classed as being at ‘very high risk’ of corruption are Iran, Afghanistan, Philippines, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. Among countries ranked high in the survey with low risk of corruption in defence sector are Britain, The United States, South Korea and Sweden, whereas Spain, France, Poland and Italy were in the moderate-risk group.

Apart from looking into the potential for corruption in defence contracts the survey also focused at the risk of abuse of defence budgets and the risk of corruption in the armed forces.

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