International Perception Of Corruption

Abstract

The discussion of corruption and bribery in most auditing textbooks focuses only on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which is an amendment to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. As the US moves toward the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and international auditing standards, an understanding of international legislation pertaining to corruption and the perception of corruption in specific countries are important. This paper provides an overview of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-bribery Convention. While prior literature has discussed the impact of both the FCPA and OECD on corruption and bribery, this paper extends prior literature by providing an update on phase II the OECD and examines how the OECD countries are viewed in comparison to non OECD countries using five publicly available measures of corruption. Corruption indices that can be purchased are also identified. Our findings show that the highest ranked OECD countries across the corruption indices are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand while the lowest ranked OECD countries are Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey. One non-OECD country, Singapore, consistently received high scores (low corruption) across the indices.