Brazil rose two places in the Corruption Perception Index in 2022, according to a Transparency International report released on Tuesday, which accuses former President Jair Bolsonaro of having created “the largest institutionalized corruption scheme” in history.
In this year’s edition of the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), prepared by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Transparency International, Brazil reached the same 38 points, on a scale of zero to 100, that it had obtained in 2021.
According to that NGO, the mandate of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023) “was marked by the dismantling of anti-corruption structures that took decades to build.”
Transparency International believes that the Bolsonaro government “created the largest institutionalized corruption scheme ever known in Brazil, known as the ‘hidden budget’.”
“With this scheme, billions of reais served to favor political allies, with serious impacts on health, education and infrastructure policies,” he highlights.
According to the report, “the combination of corruption, authoritarianism and economic recession” turned out to be “particularly volatile” in the country.
Considered a country to be monitored in 2023, Transparency International highlights that the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Workers’ Party “have not yet presented a concrete plan to combat corruption for the future, nor defined how restore the autonomy of key institutions, such as the Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Police, and environmental agencies.”
Brazil’s trend in the last five years has translated into an increase of three points, but considering the last 10 years, it has lost five.
The CPI was created by Transparency International in 1995 and since then it has been a benchmark in the analysis of the phenomenon of corruption, based on the perception of experts and businessmen on the levels of corruption in the public sector.
It is a composite index, that is, it results from the combination of corruption analysis sources developed by other independent organizations, and classifies 180 countries and territories from zero (perceived as very corrupt) to 100 points (very transparent).
In 2012, the organization revised the methodology used to build the index to allow comparison of scores from year to year.
Source: TSF
