Kazakhstan retained the status of a highly corrupt country according to the 2023 CPI

Today, January 30, 2024, the glob­al anti-cor­rup­tion move­ment Transparency International pub­lished the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2023.

At the end of 2023, Kazakhstan again found itself among the high­ly cor­rupt coun­tries, scor­ing 39 points out of 100 pos­si­ble (92nd place among 180 coun­tries). The 3‑point improve­ment over last year is pri­mar­i­ly due to the revi­tal­iza­tion of civ­il soci­ety after Qantara, which forced gov­ern­ment author­i­ties to make some improve­ments in the areas of anti-cor­rup­tion reforms, asset recov­ery and the deten­tion of high-rank­ing offi­cials and their rel­a­tives. Countries with scores below 50 are con­sid­ered high­ly cor­rupt, which hin­der the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and social well-being of citizens.

Aidar Egeubaev, Chairman of Transparency International-Kazakhstan:

“First of all, you need to under­stand that the assess­ment of the CPI is an assess­ment of the entire coun­try, and there­fore soci­ety, and the state appa­ra­tus is only part of it. Last year we saw some progress from gov­ern­ment agen­cies and these changes, of course, were a response to the most press­ing requests of Kazakhstanis. Civil soci­ety is start­ing to wake up. I am con­fi­dent that with fur­ther acti­va­tion of the entire soci­ety aimed at com­bat­ing and pre­vent­ing cor­rup­tion, espe­cial­ly in the oil sec­tor, we will be able to see fur­ther pos­i­tive dynam­ics for the future of our chil­dren.”

Kazakhstan still faces prob­lems such as a lack of trans­paren­cy in gov­ern­ment actions, a lack of full inde­pen­dence of the judi­cia­ry, and the use of influ­ence by polit­i­cal elites for their nar­row eco­nom­ic inter­ests.

According to the Rule of Law Index , the effec­tive­ness of jus­tice sys­tems around the world is declin­ing. Countries with the low­est rank­ings on the index also per­form very poor­ly on the CPI, clear­ly high­light­ing the link between access to jus­tice and cor­rup­tion. Where prin­ci­ples of jus­tice are violated—in both author­i­tar­i­an and demo­c­ra­t­ic countries—corruption increas­ing­ly goes unpun­ished and, in some cas­es, is even encour­aged by elim­i­nat­ing con­se­quences for offend­ers.

Francois Valerian, Chairman of Transparency International, said:

“Corruption will con­tin­ue to thrive until jus­tice sys­tems pun­ish wrong­do­ing and keep gov­ern­ments in line. Where jus­tice is cor­rupt­ed or sub­ject to polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, ordi­nary peo­ple suf­fer. Leaders must devote every effort to ensur­ing the inde­pen­dence of insti­tu­tions that uphold the rule of law and fight cor­rup­tion. It’s time to end impuni­ty for corruption.”

The Eastern Europe and Central Asia region has an aver­age score of 35 out of 100, mak­ing it the sec­ond region in the world with the high­est lev­els of cor­rup­tion. Only one coun­try in the region scored more than 50 points – Georgia (53).

• Kazakhstan (39) showed the best result in history.
• Armenia (47), Moldova (42), Kosovo (41), Ukraine (36) and Uzbekistan (33) have sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved their CPI scores over the past 10 years.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina (35), Turkey (34) and Turkmenistan (18) decreased their indi­ca­tors. Turkey also achieved the low­est CPI score, as did Serbia (36), Russia (26) and Tajikistan (20).
• Azerbaijan (23), Tajikistan (20) and Turkmenistan (18) are the low­est in the region.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation “Transparency International — Kazakhstan” calls for the con­tin­u­a­tion of anti-cor­rup­tion ini­tia­tives, with an empha­sis on a com­pre­hen­sive, trans­par­ent and inde­pen­dent fight against cor­rupt prac­tices. Only through joint efforts can we achieve sig­nif­i­cant progress and strength­en trust in gov­ern­ment institutions.

Translated from Russian thanks to © Google translate

Original arti­cle: Transparency International Kazakhstan