Czechia drops to 44th spot on TI’s corruption perception rankings

The Czech Republic has significantly worsened its standing in watchdog Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index for 2019.

Under TI’s criteria, the country picked up 56 points compared to 59 in 2018, falling from 38th to 44th spot in the ranking of 180 countries. In Europe, the Czech Republic dropped to 19th spot from last years’ 16th, lagging behind the EU average by eight points.

According to Transparency International, the drop is caused by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’ alleged conflict of interest stemming from the multi-billion crown agro-chemical empire Agrofert he owned and later placed in trust funds and EU subsidies to the said holding.

Transparency International’s annual Index has rated countries by perceived levels of corruption since 1995 on a scale of 0 to 2100, with 0 being very corrupt and 100 being very clean.

Author: Ruth Fraňková