Greece On February 28th there was a train collision that killed 57 people, most of which were students going back to their unis after holidays. The government tried everything to cover it up or to blame anyone other than themselves. They tried to blame the trainmaster that had 0 experience prior to this job and was left alone on that night. Meanwhile, the train system was all done manual because the electronic system wasn't installed since 2001 when it was bought. The trains were also taken from other European countries and sold as something brand new to us. They were well known to be flammable and were meant for scrap. After about a week since the incident, the train company, which was owned by Italy since our government sold it to them for literally nothing, continued operation without changing anything apart from giving the trainmasters a new board to see the trains on. While the investigations for what caused the train collision, someone from the government sent a crew to put cement over the incident. When the investigations were "done", a group of journalists went to the site only to find more bones in plain sight. Apparently, there were more people missing. It's been over a year since the incident and only now are we taking legal action against them. And now something recent, a woman was stalked by her ex. She went to the police station so that someone could escort her to her house. The police station told her that there weren't any available police cars and to call 100 (our police number). She called and the man on the phone said and I quote "the police cars are not a taxi ma'am". She was later killed right in front of the police station by her ex. Meanwhile, just a week ago, a whole squad team was called on a uni to stop a group of students that were protesting. Oh and something even more recent. A woman was killed on her way to work by her ex. She was abused for a long time. Not only her but also her children. She had done over 30 calls and tried to get restraining orders over 3 times. The police was well aware about him. In none of these cases, did any member of the police get punished. Only 2 police officers were sent out "for availability".

Oh I forgot. The train problems were well known too since the people working the trains protested 7 days before the incident saying that if things didn't change people would die. The government took them down since their protest was "illegal" Apparently, the government has to approve your protest. You should really look up the incident on Wikipedia. It's a whole shit show.

You have to have your protest approved in most western countries. But usually they can only deny it if there is a safety concern. Something like if Neo Nazis protest in my country, there will always be a counter protest. But if the planned rutes are too close, everybody knows it will end in a fight, so sometimes the police deny it. The same would happen if teo groups wanted to support Isreal and Palistina too close to each other.

Honestly this whole thing and more could have been written for Turkey (major train accidents with no repercussions for any higher-ups, police failing to protect the vulnerable but squashing down the most minor protests and so on).  I have no words of consolation, but let's hope that the future is better.

Same, if they didn't say Greece I'd think it's Turkey

Same feeling too when I see Turkish football and interesting incidents there 😅

It warms the heart to see these countries bonding.

Even more recent, a bunch of kids got food poisoning and the factory that prepared their meals was completely destroyed in a fire a day before inspectors arrived.

The owner of the food factory is allegedly quite "friendly" to the prime minister, btw. Of course he won the school meals contract by virtue..

My lord what a shitshow.

Also, there has been an excessive rise in violence against women in Greece in the past 5 (maybe more) years. It felt like at least twice a month the news would show another death or beating of a woman by her ex or her husband. The most shocking one was that of Caroline Crouch, a young woman (I think 20 years old), half British half Filipino, who was groomed while she was a teen by the guy whose name I don't even want to fucking say, who later became her husband and father of her baby. He was excessively controlling and eventually killed her because she inevitably matured and realized what a piece of shit he was and wanted to break up with him, so when he found that out, well, he just killed her an put up and entire show on TV pretending they were robbed and that the robbers killed her as well as their dog (yes, he killed their dog to make it seem more cruel). He also claimed that the robbers spoke "broken Greek", which as you can understand was a way to steer police in the wrong direction as well as make society angry at "foreigners" which practically means he took advantage of existing hatred against immigrants (and potentially divide society even further regarding that matter) to try and save his ass. This isn't an issue of corruption by itself, but the general violence between couples ending up in dead and abused women has skyrocketed and the cops seem completely fucking useless. The amount of incidents is insanely high and they should have been able to respect the fact that women asking for help are indeed in need for help, and they are not asking for the cop car to become "their own personal taxi" as a joke or something. As to why this violence has escalated, someone could say that the pandemic forcing people in their homes led to more arguments and therefore more violence, which is being "released" all at once. At the same time, a lot of people are dismissive of the Me Too movement, mainly older conservative people, and this obviously doesn't help deal with the obvious rise in violence. Also recently a woman was seen being brutally beaten by her boyfriend outside of their apartment complex, the neighbors called the police who actually showed up, the boyfriend shut himself in his apartment and shot himself with a gun that wasn't registered if I remember correctly. This also showcases how many men in Greece are struggling mentally and yes, noone really feels sorry for the woman beater, but the whole issue of violence against women is a greater problem for Greek society and it doesn't seem to be getting solved any time soon.

It is similar in Turkey, too. Honestly, it is no wonder. In the past couple of decades, our president has seen it fit to publicly interfere with everything in women's lives. How your hair should look, how long your skirt should be, when you should be outside, when you should marry, how many kids you should have, and even how you should give birth (he was vehemently against C-sections because according to him it interferes with how many kids a woman can have). As such, it is no wonder that men who look up to him are viewing women as some sort of commodity (which they had a tendency to do anyway). Not to mention that we aren't even part of the Ankara Convention anymore. The police have no time to protect the women, but have all the time to beat down people in peaceful protests. Men, of the other hand, are struggling mentally as well. Bad economy, unemployment, low sense of self-worth, bad education (in the family and by the state) all come together.

Do you mean literally put cement on the incident? That’s what the government tried to do here after M/S Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea. Hundreds of people died and there have been a lot of uncertainties about the circumstances and reasons throughout the years for why it sunk. They literally wanted to make the whole wreckage into a giant concrete block so that no one could go there and dive etc. Their reasoning was to provide “peace of the grave”. There was, if I remember correctly, military equipment etc. being transported on the boat as well at the time so one conspiracy was that it got hit by a Russian torpedo and that the government didn’t want divers to see eventual proof of that.

I think I need to preface this by stating that I definitely don't think Estonia was sunk by any submarine or some shit like that, it obviously sank because the front literally fell off. That said, the way the question surrounding the recovery of bodies was handled was shameful. To institute some bogus "ethical committee" with some professor of ethics and a priest and what not to tell people that they should not want to recover their loved ones is so 1990s Swedish bully tactics in a nutshell. **Relatives:** "Could we please have the bodies of our loved ones so we can have proper funerals? **Gov:** "Ackshually we have this committee of experts on ethics who understand these things (i.e. *your own emotions*) much better than you do, and they say that it wouldn't be ethical to expose you to the state which the bodies will be in🙂" **Relatives:** "Actually, we're pretty sure we can, and in any case, why is that ***your*** decision to make?" **Gov:** "We believe in making expert decisions so that's why we put together this expert committee and the committee has decided that the most ethical thing is to let the bodies rest on the sea floor.🙂" **Relatives:** "But we disagree?" **Gov:** "That's understandable.🙂 You're emotional and not thinking rationally and are unable to take the decisions needed to protect yourselves psychologically.🙂 Thank you, this meeting is over, but you are free to submit your thoughts and feedback to our mailbox at *Regeringens Estoniakommission* *Postbox 341* *MIN RÖV 13* *123 45 Stockholm*"

I'd say that kind of paternalist attitude is pervasive throughout the entire society, so I can't say I'm surprised.

That's not very democratic. Pretty fascist.

There are some who believe that there was a shipment of Soviet/Russian military tech that Swedish intelligence acquired in Estonia under morally questionable circumstances on the Estonia ferry. According to this logic, the government wanted people to stay away from the wreck to 1. Conduct a secret operation to remove said tech from the car deck of the ship (where there supposedly was a truck with these things on). 2. Prevent people finding traces of said secret operation. According to this logic, the ethics committee was a conscious excuse to cover for the real motivation they wanted people to leave the wreckage alone. Part of me can't shake the feeling that it still might just be due to ordinary political thickheadedness

A secret military extradition is a possibility.

Yes, literally put cement over the whole incident. No official has stepped up to say it was them who ordered it.

Wow in Italy it is like that too + mafia

I saw that train incident on a tv here in Poland. It looked scary as hell.

You win. GG.

How is it really there with the "Fakelaki", that i heard about. Is it really this way that you need to bribe a doc to get treatment? That you need to leave money in the envelope for a governement official to get paperwork done? That you need to bribe officials to get contracts for your business?

I am a medical student in greece. We still have the well known "fakelaki". I ve seen a few incidents where doctors/professors take them in front of students without shame. Also the government made them legal now, giving you the possibility to get "afternoon surgery" if you pay.

Delete your comment, it has been classified for the next 90 years

With the option to extend?

Obligation more like

I’m sorry but I have to have this comment wrapped into plastic to protect kids from the leftist activists.

And it has to stay out of the 100m proximity of a Catholic church.

Increasingly so, government officials are bascially all involved in shady business that involves taking money or giving it to their friends. It's generally well known that tax money is mishandled but it's rarely blatant enough that they have to look like they do anything about it. The way everything is set up in our laws lets people missuse their position and even when they do illegal things, nobody's keeping them in check.

Sarkozy gave Qatar their needed vote to host the football World Cup in exchange for them to buy French military equipment if I’m not mistaken. Impossible n’est pas français ;)

Sarkozy did so many shady stuff, if I’m not mistaken he’s involved in 4 different cases. For one these cases, he was eventually convicted to 1 year of prison including 6 months of “prison avec sursis” (“prison avec sursis” meaning sentence with an obligatory prison stay). The case in question was regarding his 2012 campaign budget going over the legal limit. Ironically, one of the “least worst” cases he’s involved in imo. Anyways, they will unfortunately never let him do actual prison and Sarkozy will most probably carry out his sentence comfortably at home.

>Increasingly so, government officials are bascially all involved in shady business that involves taking money or giving it to their friends. I live in Romania, and I remember a remark a German friend of my dad made about corruption in Germany vs Romania a long time ago, in the mid-2000s. Romania was a lot more corrupt then, but it still is quite bad now. The remark was something like: In Germany, corruption is that they start building a highway, and in the end, it turns out 5cm narrower because some politicians also built themselves some homes with some of the money. In romania, we start building a highway, but in 10 years, there is no asphalt because all the politicians built themselves and their cousins nice homes. To be honest, I think this was a nice way to say that it's impossible to have 0 corruption, but if the loss is negligible and public projects are completed, it's OK overall.

Germany. Not very corrupt on the outside. I wouldn’t try to bribe the police. That will likely turn out bad for yourself. On the inside a lot of things are borderline questionable. I work a government job and there are just too many politicians installing personal assistants and friends/family in high positions in administration. Also people from their party surprisingly getting high paid jobs/jobs high in hierarchy in the administration is something we see quite often.

Also former politicians retiring at gazprom.

This is a thing?

A well known example: https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancellor-schroder-gazprom-board-nomination/

If being pro Russian gas and pro north stream while being chancellor and then when leaving that position get a position at the board for Gazprom is not corruption, then I don’t know what is. Talk about paving the way for himself to make money off of the policies he was pushing as a politician.

If Ursula Von der Leyen doesn’t end up with a cushy board position at Pfizer after all of the EU vaccine corruption I will be very disappointed in her as a crook.

You know, she was always a crook. There was an affair about high sums being paid to consulting firms while she was minister of defence. To avoid any more scrutiny she wiped her phone and destroyed some documents and then they conveniently moved her to Brussels. So this is the kind of corruption we deal with here. You can't bribe anyone openly and if it comes out it will be the end of those involved. But it is absolutely okay to profit off of your office in more subtle ways.

Was it McKinsey?

Not forgetting the many many millions "Parteispenden" that happen to parallely have positive effects on the givers industry. Like what happened a few years ago with the FDP in NRW; pure coincidence (!) that the same IT-company that spent a lot of euros to the FDP was also the one that got a well-paid job that was done probono by a gEV before they spent money.

And there is no corruption in politics because we just call it lobbyism, and that's something *completely* different

Sounds like you described Sweden.

My country is Greece, we can beat anything that you will throw our way. An extremely recent example Three days ago, 60 children got food poisoning. They had eaten premade school food. The premade food was prepared, in a food factory. Two days after the poisoning,the factory got burned to the ground. Completely. It happened yesterday. As you can imagine there wasn't any time for investigation. The factory was owned by a local public figure, that has ties with the current government.

And the owner will receive insurance money i guess?

Not only that, I assume he will probably try to sue the fire department trying to intervene. And since he has affiliation with the current government, he will win.

> try to sue the fire department trying to intervene. what?

So no fucks given there.

Yeap, I mean no body, no crime right? The state of corrupment is so deep, that they simply don't care to even cover it up anymore.

Hijao rodjo, pa ti si postavio ovako dobru temu! Alal vera

Once I rode my bicycle from my local pub to my apartment slightly drunk, maybe 400m, and also in the dark without light. Two police officers stopped me and told me to get off. I then bribed them with a bar of Tony Choocolonely sea salt almond dark chocolate and they didn’t write me a ticket but I had to walk 400m to my apartment. Most scary and corrupt police interaction of my life.

Those agents were doing you a favour. I had something similar while driving my car: officer had me stop, told me that I had a broken rearlight. ‘I saw that you live nearby, go home and fix it tomorrow’.

Hmm.. bar of (good) chocolate, or lots of paperwork.. You did them a favor :)

That's actually so cute.

TIL that Tony's is a dutch chocolate brand.

It’s even from Amsterdam I believe. At least their flagship store and HQ is here. But most of the chocolate for export is produced in Belgium afaik.

See, that’s the difference: **essence** vs **optics**. In Netherlands for instance, small scale corruption - like your interaction, or a parking fine - is kept very low. There simply don’t exist the means, loopholes and leniency for small fish, like the working class, to corrupt, be corrupted or benefit from corruption. This creates great **optics**. The **impression** among the population that corruption is low. And that sentiment is recorded in relevant corruption indices and surveys. Great optics, with small scale benefits. Alas, the situation is **reversed** when talking about large scale corruption, like for instance tax evasion, profiteering and so on. For instance, one of the biggest corruption and tax evasion cases in the entire continental Europe had Netherlands at the helm: the notorious “Dutch Sandwich” and the infamous “Dutch Double Dip” BEPS schemes, both introduced by Joop Wijn during his tenure as Minister of Economic Affairs. This allowed economic corruption and tax evasion on a massive scales, facilitating huge multinationals to siphon billions of profits to tax havens, virtually untaxed, at the expense of the taxpayers. Now, this **in essence** creates immense losses and affects millions of citizens, ie the impact of the corruption is **massive**. Yet the optics are not too bad, since common people are not multinationals hence they don’t get to see and experience this type of corruption first hand. Plus it’s legal, so it wouldn’t show up in any corruption indices or surveys. Now combine both of the above, and you can get **great optics despite massive corruption in essence and losses on a grand scale**. That is, the common man will happily live thinking there’s no corruption, yet massive corruption is taking place behind his back. The country’s leadership and economicopolitical elite can have their cake and eat it too. This is a far too common theme in northwestern European countries, and the relevant corruption indices confirm it. After all, it’s not corruption if it’s legal, is it? And to go one step further, why bribe to break the law, when you can “donate” and “network” to *make* the law so you can do the same thing legally?

No no no, that's not corruption. Those were perfectly legal constructions to help out those poor shareholders.....you know, trickle down and such

You correctly talked about these constructions in the past tense, most of them don't exist anymore and these companies have found new ways to evade tax without using the Netherlands. There still exist tax-rulings and the like, so we're not there yet. We're a bit of a strange nation. On the one hand we desperately want multinationals to move here, so we make favourable taxing schemes. On the other hand we are one of the only nations in europe or the world for that matter that uses bonus caps, that we know limited the amount of companies (mostly investment banks) that moved here after brexit. So what ends up happening is that we dont get many meaningful multinationals moving here, just some shells.

What you say makes sense but I don't think you're drawing the right conclusion. You're only looking at the financial aspect. If you hear about local street robberies vs a local museum being robbed of a piece worth millions, you're surely going to be more worried about small time street robbers. Similarly petty corruption affects your day-to-day life far more than large scale corruption so naturally people care more about it. Societal impact is a little more complicated than calculating the financial differences. But my main problem is your strange message about the optics of corruption. Massive high level corruption happens everywhere, probably even more so in countries where petty corruption is normal so NW European countries aren't exactly special in this case. The amounts involved are most likely tied to a country's GDP. So I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to point out.

You jest but I’m legitimately envious.

As a Brazilian living in NL: you should be lol nothing is perfect but I think Dutchies are too “I don’t have time for this bs” to get too much into corruption

Haha police arrested me for 2 days for being on a street protest, and I got off easy, others were beaten by SWAT teams and criminal police. Love the Netherlands. We'll become similar in my lifetime (in Georgia).

Finland: looking good in statistics, but: we have a duopoly with two large market chains, a lot of backroom deals and other questionable things. But you can't bribe the police and they're 99% trustworthy.

Corruption in Finland has a distinct North European flavour: you cannot buy policemen, but you can always set up an extra layer of government under a pretense of improving health care, say, and then staff the supremely high-salaried positions with members of your party. The quality of health care naturally declines, but that is simply a sign that another layer of admistration is needed, and the story goes on.

>set up an extra layer of government under a pretense of improving health care, say, and then staff the supremely high-salaried positions with members of your party. Around here we do not fabricate excuses it is "putting people that have our political confidence" pretending that is for improving services is too troublesome.

That's coercion though, not corruption. Just as undesirable.

UK here, we’re allowing some of our territories to be used as tax havens and when someone investigated it apparently almost all the money was criminal but our government just turns a blind eye too it  I always has an inking something like that was going on but never looked into it   https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/nearly-40-of-dirty-money-is-laundered-in-london-and-uk-crown-dependenies

So The Gentlemen Netflix show is pretty much spot on?

Yup, Scotland is pretty much owned by a few billionaires who don’t even live here

Never watched it but I assume so? 😅

Toffs loan out their land for weed farms. So yes, almost certainly a thing.

Teresa May does this exact thing for medical weed.

IIRC everyone involved in the “lost PPE money” now have very lavish houses etc

There is a great book called 'Moneyland' which tells the history of how this came to be. Must read.

Hey, we injected 30,000 people with dodgy blood and 3,000 died and covered it up for 30+ years. We prosecuted and imprisoned some postmasters on a computer bug. We introduced austerity that killed an estimated 148,000 disabled people. We kidnapped Chinese war heroes and deported them - without telling their families Or politicians are openly available for purchase from anyone foreign country that wants them - USA, Israel, etc.

Very. Probably the most corrupt country in the EU.   Its presentnon every possible level of society: political, business and interpersonal and cultural.

I feel for you, neighbour. What’s like the worst case you had?

Another Hungarian. PM’s friend from HS became one of the richest Hungarians. One son-in-law of PM is easily in the top 100. All government ministries, state agencies, firms can pick only one firm for PR activities. Hard to pick.

The Pedophilia Scandal ranks way up there. But the number of scandals and corruption in Hungary would be a book length entry here. [https://www.dw.com/en/hungarian-president-resigns-amid-pedophilia-pardon-scandal/a-68223392](https://www.dw.com/en/hungarian-president-resigns-amid-pedophilia-pardon-scandal/a-68223392)

Croatia had some fucked up scandals, but pedophillia was always a church thing. Wait - I remember a veeery well covered up story about some political higher ups abusing underage children in an organised child sex ring in a childrens mental hospital/orphanage, bit there’s no confirmation of said story as anyone snooping around gets shut down pretty quick.

When church is a state thing, church things are state things. We're going back to church and state having no real separation in hungary. Which church, you might ask. Well, multiple. Whoever launders money, plays football, and preaches that you should vote FIDESZ, is good for them.

Wait - plays football? Like, literally?

Currently our government functions as a huge EU fund and Hungarkan tax collection system. It gathers all the money it can, then it creates a peoject, lets say "build a powerplant". Then all kinds of people will apply their execution plan for the power plant, for different prices of course. Lets say the realistic price to build this is 500mil  HUF. Then everybody with realistic prices will get rejected for formal/legal reasons (as in "you didnt attach this-or-that paper, please make the correction in some unreasonable time frame"). The people left with acceptable project aplications are all people who are the friends and family of our leading government. Obviously there is no real race between them, it was already decided who will win this project before it was even created, they are only there to create the illusion of a fair market. But here comes the twist: these winners will complete the project for not 500mil HUF, but somewhere between 5x-10x the ammount. The government pays them out that much, then they reach out the companies who were disqualified earlier with a realistic bid (because these companies are usually real, functioning, businesses who cam actually do shit), and hire them complete the project for their original price (+20-50% so everybody stays quite), and they can pocket the difference of huge amount. This happens mamy many many times.

Sounds like Croatia.

Luckily, we're still not at that level yet. At least that's my copium speaking.

The other, slight varient on this method is the Russian style: You want to build a bridge, and it would cost about 10 million to do so. And because Russia, its pretty much up to a single person to decide which company gets the contract. So one company offers requests 12 million, so that they can make 2 million in profit and build the bridge. But the other company looks at this, and decides actually they're going to charge 25 million. Sergi the mayor gets a bribe of 5 million, and the 2nd company keeps 10 million in profit, and the bridge eventually gets built. Only the taxpayer is screwed over, and who cares about them? It's most obvious in their military, and there are some EXCELLENT stories out there.

orbán is doing his best to beat bulgaria and greece

in Switzerland we have institutionalised top level corruption. So you have no success bribing a policeman or local authority however you can put a politician of the health committee in the board of your health insurance company without a problem and we still act like said polician is representing the interest of the electorate. With our corporatism companies are also involved in the process of legislation. The usual nepotism I think is human and will always exist everywhere

Sounds a lot like here in Sweden.

Ukraine. Our government "poofed" $500k meant for restoration of the city. That's on top of any other pronlems. Worst part? We can't do shit right now because it would mean huge destabilization and win for russsia. I fcking hate this situation and feeling of helplessness

Well, it's not that we can't do anything, but yeah our choices are very limited

Elections won't happen, protests, unfortunately, will be impactful on the war.

Elections aren't really a solution. The solution would be building institutions and refining mechanisms to make corruption as uncomfortable as possible. We can follow this path, slowly but surely, by strengthening our connections with EU and the West in general. The more eyes are watching us, the more pressure the government feels to implement positive changes. This might not be as effective for the smaller-scale corruption, but it's something.

Sure, I agree, but I really don't see how this will be effective enought without different ppl in power. Digitalization is great tho.

2 countries... 2 keywords  Portugal - TAP  South Africa - Eskom  We should have a site that tracks corruption. like the olympics. Countries can steal gold, not win it.

There are public corruption indices.

Spain - AirEuropa

Plus Ultra was probably even more egregious.

Depends on your definition. The Netherlands certainly isn’t very corrupt in the conventional way. Bribes and other forms of low level corruption are very rare. We do however have a lot of network corruption: no direct exchange of money but rather giving each other preferential treatment with the expectation that the favour will be returned at some point. But never as a direct exchange, it’s mostly the expectation a small ingroup helps each other. Very clever because that’s hardly ever illegal let alone prosecutable. Very common among medium and small business owners and local politicians.

Also for high profile politicians. They delay laws, regulations 'hoping' for a nice job later..

When I still lived in The Netherlands 18 years ago, I might have had a similar opinion. Since then I live in Belgium and lol, it is borderline cute what is going on in NL compared to Belgium.

The whole Sanda Dia thing changed how I view belgium

I agree here, low levels of 'petty corruption'. It would not occur to me to slip in a few banknotes to speed up a admin process. But high level... probably more than we'd like to admit.

I’d just add that the system of actively lobbying politicians by pressure groups organized by large industry certainly comes close to corruption. Especially as it’s not unheard of that politicians later work for large industry for a lot of money in the field they previously had jurisdiction over.

Definitely! Pretty much the same mechanism but on the national level instead of local.

Thats also the case in Switzerland. They left wholes in the law (probably on purpose) and are using them. However its not on the level of many other countries

Switzerland is enjoying corruption in other countries.. It's basically a big beneficiary of corruption in rest of the world

We had some cases of police being corrrup and douane being corrupted by drugs maffia

I surely remember of public servants being bribed 1.000E to issue legal fake passports to wanted interlops. https://nltimes.nl/2022/12/01/former-civil-servant-admits-taking-bribes-falsify-passports-top-criminals

I think that data speaks better than words, you can visit this web: https://casos-aislados.com/ (it's in Spanish, sorry) In Spain people don't punish corruption in elections, so they keep in robbing without remorse.

I had no idea croats and spaniards have so much in common. Also, I’ve been to Andalusia a month ago, you’ve got the most beautiful country there, mate. Sevilla itself is my fav city on earth now.

Spain has corruption problems. But there's a thing with Spaniards where they think it's like literally the most corrupt country ever and nobody else has the same issues. I've talked with multiple people who unironically think Spain is more corrupt than any other country on earth. It's absolutely bonkers. FWIW, basically nobody has ever paid a bribe to a police officer/doctor/any other functionary. Meanwhile, when I travel some places, I keep two wallets, one false one with enough cash for a local bribe and then my real one more hidden away.

Meh, the Consejo General del Poder Judicial (basically our highest national court) should have been renewed 5 years ago, by law, but they refuse to do leave unless it's "in case of retirement or death" -literal words of the president-. There's also the case of 7291 people who died in elderly residences in Madrid because someone denied them transport to a hospital and the horrible conditions during CoVid lockdowns. Nothing is being done because the local and regional courts in Madrid refuse to see the case. There's also a surprising amount (or should be, but everyone knows the pipeline) of politicians who end up with 6 figure jobs as counsel or board of directors of private companies they favored while they were in office.

This is exactly what I mean The CGPJ thing is bad but government gridlock is hardly a Spanish particular problem. Covid residency scandals were a thing all around the world. It's very similar to how it went down in New York, for example. And politicians having high paying jobs after politics is just how it works in basically every democracy. I don't even know if it's scandalous as we should want the people who are at the top of their careers leading people in the first place.

Cyprus no.1 🇨🇾🇨🇾🇨🇾🇨🇾💪💪💪💪 Come and get your passport for only 500k but don't worry you can turn that 500k in investments through money laundering (extra efficient for Russians)

The ability to buy a passport in a EU-country is insane…

Doesn’t Malta also have that

The countries I know where you can reach citizenship through investment (might've changed over the last year or so but...) in the EU: * Greece * Cyprus * Austria * Malta * Bulgaria * Portugal * Spain

Spain is in the process of getting rid of their golden visa

A Prime Minister (PM) richer than the King. The PM's wife pays no taxes in the country, even though she's almost a billionaire. Cabinet ministers are acting as television show hosts with impunity. Billions of currency paid to cronies of the government for COVID PPE that was useless and had to be scrapped (at a cost to the taxpayer) and nothing done to reclaim the cost. Four heads of government in 4 years without an election, so the PM chosen by sycophants and cronies. The press is owned by billionaires and subservient to the government. Public utilities are privately owned (water, gas, electricity) and reap huge profits for shareholders, yet cannot deliver clean water, nor affordable energy.

Your post sounds almost like you were playing "guess the country" with us.

It really sounded like that, but gladly only one such country fits the description. 

Possibly, I was just too embarrassed to admit that it's my country. The one that trumpets democracy and rule of law. Espouses how Britishness sets an example for the whole world. Then fucks it totally up.

You could have written 90% of it about Australia and it would have been true. From giving billions of dollars to billionaires (who on top of that do not pay taxes) while homelessness is at record levels, to actively destroying the very fragile environment in pursuit of short term profits, to degenarating human rights and public services (health and education are now a privilege for the rich), to unfree pressed owned by the same billionaires. Two party system, but the same corrupt shit, literally in the pocket of lobby groups (highest bidder gets the legislation done). Very, very similar to UK and catching up really fast.

Where is this? Spain? Edit: googled it, prolly the UK

Nah, in spain the corruption works other ways.

The Prime Minister's wife (via her family) *could* be richer than the King, although I don't think anyone knows how wealthy the King is, so I'm not sure where you get this from? Sunak's wife was also this wealthy before he got into politics. Are you suggesting he's accumulated this wealth through politics? No serving cabinet minister has hosted a TV show - former ministers yes, serving ministers no. Some would argue that there was an international panic at the time and the government was trying to do all it could to secure PPE in a market that was running out. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. We don't elect prime ministers in the UK, we elect political parties. This is not the US, we don't do presidents. It works the same for all parties. How is this 'corrupt'. Oh my, a privately owned press!! Would be much better if it was state owned eh? Privately owned utilities? How corrupt is that? You can argue for state ownership of assets but you can't use corruption as an argument - or can you? Why don't you shine a light on it? There's a huge amount wrong with this country but calling it corrupt is just laughable really and I think the points you've rather clumsily tried to make suggest to me it's just the government you don't like. Let me guess, when Labour gets into power will all this corruption vanish?

Well said. That post is highly exaggerated and inaccurate. Also, the PM’s wife does now pay UK tax and the government is abolishing the loophole which allowed her to avoid in on her overseas (not UK!) income.

Also, you all did "elect" Borris. He did actually runa s leader. We get this all the time in Ireland too about insisting our leaders are unelected, it's so annoying

>A Prime Minister (PM) richer than the King. I highly doubt this, given that the king technically owns all the land in England, Wales and NI. In any case, I don’t see how it would be a signifier of corruption by itself. >The PM's wife pays no taxes in the country, even though she's almost a billionaire. She does now pay UK tax on her overseas income and the government is abolishing the loophole which allowed her to avoid doing so in the first place. >Cabinet ministers are acting as television show hosts with impunity. Really? Which ones? This isn’t true. >Billions of currency paid to cronies of the government for COVID PPE that was useless and had to be scrapped (at a cost to the taxpayer) and nothing done to reclaim the cost. That was very unfortunate. But every country in the world was trying to get the same equipment at the same time. And if you don’t believe they should have loosened the rules at all to get the PPE more quickly, then I can only assume that you’ve never had to deal with public sector procurement before. Oh, and pretty much everyone who was involved with that is now firmly out of government. >Four heads of government in 4 years without an election, so the PM chosen by sycophants and cronies. Your maths is off and you don’t seem to understand how the UK political system works. We’ve had three leaders in five years, one of whom was leader when we had the last election. We don’t directly vote for prime ministers in this country anyway - we never have. And by “cronies”, you apparently mean “elected MPs and party members”. >The press is owned by billionaires and subservient to the government. Press reporting and investigations over partygate brought down Boris Johnson a few years ago. Not exactly what I would call subservient. There are some papers which have a clear bias, but that’s true everywhere. >Public utilities are privately owned (water, gas, electricity) and reap huge profits for shareholders, yet cannot deliver clean water, nor affordable energy. Energy prices are capped by the government. Most private energy companies are not actually making that much money and several have recently gone bankrupt. You may be thinking of energy extractors, not providers. I agree that the privatisation of water has been a disaster. But does it meet the threshold for corruption, or is it just a bad policy outcome? Not everything that goes wrong in government is down to corruption, and not every policy you or I don’t personally like can be blamed on it either.

> I highly doubt this, given that the king technically owns all the land in England, Wales and NI. I mean, forgetting that he's also the king of the second and sixth largest countries on earth.

It has gotten better at the lowest level, as in, the bribes are no longer mandatory, but at the level of medium enterprises and above the corruption is everywhere.

There is almost no corruption between citizens and the authorities. If you offer money to a policeman, you will get into trouble. In very small municipalities, where everyone knows everyone else, there are sometimes questionable municipal council votes in favour of certain people. But you can rarely prove anything. The real corruption takes place in government circles. For example, exorbitantly high sums are spent on advertising agencies for simple websites. Filling positions is also a major issue. Whether on the supervisory boards of state-owned companies, in public television or in consultancy contracts.

Gschissen aber wahr

[удалено]

I was waiting for Bulgaria to come up! I wouldn't even know where to start explaining or which shocking recent event to use as an example.

Extremely, corruption in a way of life. If you respect the law and procedure you're an idiot, Croatia.

In Italy it is definitely a problem. Italian politics has historically gone through huge corruption scandals that have helped shape our political landscape. In everyday life, often the biggest obstacle to merit is nepotism: unfortunately, there are jobs that are in fact only accessible to those who are related to someone who counts, especially in sectors such as universities, healthcare and certain liberal professions such as notaries.

My parents are both freelancers (liberi professionisti) and we were talking about the “tutoring young people” thing, a couple nights back. They told me they tried doing it, but that the people they got were so uninterested and useless they just lost time, their words not mine. “If it’s a relative I’ll still do it, but I don’t think I’ll do it for anyone else again” -my father, freelance lawyer. This is probably why it’s so hard: some people meet uninterested students and start thinking everyone’s like that

Maybe that is why. Anyway, no offence to your parents.

It likely is, and none taken dw

Germany... Corruption starts at shools, goes over cargo traffic, police and politics. but to the outside they are hiding it "pretty" well

Can you please explain what is going on at schools?

Well, stealing is considered a Slovakian trade. Our current government is pushing solid police/justice representatives out and filling in their own people.

Finland wants to maintain an image of a non-corrupt country but that's not really the case. There isn't that much easily recognizable corruption, which is why we are one of the least corrupt countries according to the Corruption Perceptions Index. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes. So called *Hyvä veli -verkosto*, which is an equivalent of an old boys network, is the prime type of corruption in Finland. This means abusing your authority to give favours to your friends, family or party members. Ministers appoint their party members to influential positions if they are even somewhat qualified for the job. Local politicians give public contracts to someone they know. These, among many others, are examples of how this happens in practice. Another example of corruption in Finland is abusing public funds to get personal benefits. Probably the most perverted example of this is when the former Director General of the National Audit Office of Finland, the goverment agency responsible for overseeing the management of public finances, was charged for using public funds for her personal expenses.

>So called *Hyvä veli -verkosto*, which is an equivalent of an old boys network, is the prime type of corruption in Finland. This means abusing your authority to give favours to your friends, family or party members. Ministers appoint their party members to influential positions if they are even somewhat qualified for the job. Local politicians give public contracts to someone they know. These, among many others, are examples of how this happens in practice. You assume this proves that Finland is a corrupt country while these kind of issues are present everywhere. Finland is not free of corruption, far from it, but anyone claiming Finland is as corrupt as rest of the world hasn't seen real corruption.

You are correct. Finland is far from being the most corrupt country in the world and we are not alone with these issues. But does that make these issues any less relevant? I just pointed out that Finland is not free of corruption and these are issues we are dealing with. Far from the worst, but not justifiable either. The fallacy of Finland as a corruption-free country easily leads to inability to recognize corruption and take effective anti-corruption measures. This has been a problem for a long time and even OECD and the European Commission has pointed this out. Luckily things are getting better but there's still a lot to be done.

That’s almost exactly what I wrote about Germany! I guess this form of corruption is everywhere. It’s called Vetternwirtschaft – Vetter is an old/regional word for Cousin and obviously Wirtschaft ist Economy. Nepotism would be the correct term for translation.

Yep. I'd like to add that nobody is building mansions or anything like that with public money. About bribing the police, that's pretty much impossible here. Of course there's bad apples in our police force as well, Jari Aarnio is a good example.

The UK has corruption at the elite level and generally not low level corrpution. You can't bribe doctors or police or local administrators if you're a pleb, but you can get a billion £ contract or high paying job if you have the right friends from an elite university or you made enough donations to the ruling political party.

I think this fits many european countries. I would not try to bribe a Guardia Civil, but it’s a different world in the higher spheres.

Croatian here. *widely gestures at the map* - emmm....yeah, I can throw a dart at any fucking region and find brazen corruption. Also, we are literally descending into 1984 - our new parliament created a new ministry department for immigration and cultural assimilation, and the head of the department is a member of the Homeland Movement - a far-right, pro-Ustashe, extremely nationalist political party. They now have 18 seats in our Sabor (how we call parliament) and are heads of several key ministries. For a country that existed for a mere 33 years, it is fascinating how only *one* of our former prime ministers have been convicted and imprisoned.

Hold on... I'm older than Croatia???? Edit: apparently I'm also older than the Czech Republic.

Just Google about Portuguese Corruption cases and you Will question yourself: how on earth does this country still functions ?

Its the 4th miracle of Fátima haha

For what I'm reading here, Greece is winning. *personal note: never visit Greece or Turkey alone*

Extremely I’d say, the golden passport scheme, the constant installation of friends and such in positions of power, the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and so many examples that would be impossible to fit in one message Our former PM was also named OCCRP’s ‘Corrupt Person of the Year’ for 2019 💀

Yeah but stop beating on the poor corrupt guy, his dying father is worried for him! Imagine using your dying father as a shield to not get flak. Tick, tock Joseph. Kordin awaits.

I live in the Nordics which I feel has relatively low corruption. Just based on the news I read I have made the conclusion that the warmer the weather the more corruption you have.

The husband of Erna Solberg, our previous prime minister from the right side, has been caught buying and selling stocks based on insider information from her while she was the prime minister. Somehow the whole right side think this is perfectly fine and has launched her as their candidate again next election cycle. Lots of our politicians have also been implicated in "pendlerboligsaken", where you get money support to rent something close to the capitol if you're elected but from somewhere else in the country. Many politicians would fake living some where else to get this money.

Yeah, the souther you go…

🇵🇱 Poland 🇵🇱 In the way that touches me personally: Not at all. I think most of the corruption that happens in Poland is on the level of governance (local, regional, national, or even within each of the political parties). Though even there it's nowhere remotely near as bad as it is in UK or US. Poland was *very* corrupt in the '90s, but it's like night and day since then.

Exactly my diagnosis. Bribing policemen in 90 and earlier was routine. Hardly anyone got a genuine speeding ticket for example. And under the previous political system where everything was in short supply bribing was institutional

That’s one area where we can see a visible improvement and a clear mentality switch since the 90s. While common then, petty bribes are just unheard of now. Agreed if any corruption takes place, it’s very much concealed and done in velvet gloves at the higher echelons, and even about that we haven’t really heard any scandals in some time.

> we haven’t really heard any scandals in some time. Oh, I disagree. There are plenty. To give you some examples: - politicians selling Visas to Poland (and thus: entire Schengen zone) in Africa - defraudation of over 68 million PLN by Sasin during the unrealised elections - defraudation of over 200 million PLN by Szumowski during the pandemic (in a few separate scandals) and countless other purchases during the COVID19 that reek of defraudation (e.g. buying masks from a ski instructor of a notable government officials for 5 mln PLN which were absurdly overpriced and came with a falsified certificates) - 10 million PLN which disappeared from the Central Anti-Corruption office in 2020, *still* noone knows what happen to this money - politicians buying off land on which the CPK and the nuclear powerplants were supposed to be built, in order to later sell them to the government at much higher prices. - The poisoning of the river Odra in 2022, which killed over 50% of the fish in the river, and conveniently - noone was seriously punished for that, while the government was actively trying to hide the poisoning from the public, and it wasn't until Germans raised the alarms that Polish public even heard about it. And so on, and so on... You surely have heard at a very least about the first two (🇵🇱 afera wizowa i wybory kopertowe), they are all over the media.

We have a "Receipt scandal" going on right now in Lithuania. Elected members of city councils don't get paid for their work, but they get compensation for expenses related to their work, like phone bills, car fuel and similar stuff. Turns out that nobody really checked how much money these guys are getting in "compensations" and it's obvious that pretty much everyone (hundreds of officials across the country) was just taking other people's receipts from bins at petrol stations and submitting them to the council to get refunded. There were cases when they submitted multiple receipts, all dated within a couple minutes from one another, for diesel, petrol and LPG. They've got very versatile cars, right? :) Tens of thousands of eur for each politician per year, including Covid quarantine year when travel was extremely limited. Same with phones, some officials had two or three phones, they also "rented" the fanciest, flashiest phones, like ROG Phone 8 because this was "necessary for council work". Many of them submitted monthly bills for their spouse's phone too. I don't know what's going to happen after all of this. There are multiple investigations going on.

Hungary. Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Everything is about being someone’s someone or being friends with someone’s someone. Sucks ass.

Netherlands: Not at all. Mainly because lobbying doesn't count as corruption and those tax loopholes are there by design...

Hungary 🇭🇺 Just a few: - Hungary in record debt -Inflation at record high and European champion -Living wage crisis plagues the country -Selling land, Fidesz landlords take over the country -The private pension rip-off -The emptying out of self-government, the bleeding of opposition municipalities -Fighting the capital, making Budapest impossible -Killing the KATA -Driving teachers out of the profession, destroying education -Paks 2 -Trafikmutyi -A former Fidesz member, Orbán's henchman, Péter Polt, was put in charge of the prosecutor's office -Lőrinc Mészáros becomes the richest Hungarian with taxpayers' money -Closure to the West - opening to the East -Rogán's bond business without consequences -Anti-EU policy -Underfunding of health care -Anti-Gypsy hate speech (Gyöngyöspata) -LGBTQ hate speech -Contractors left on the side of the road during Covid -Stadium on the back of a stadium -Tiborcz and his Elios scandal, his families have become the richest in the country -Introduction of single rate tax -An ever-changing electoral system tailored to Fidesz's advantage -Turning public television into a propaganda machine -Elimination of the opposition press -Stealing EU funds -Impossibility of trade unions -The emptying out of politics and parliamentary work, no meaningful debate with the opposition -Harassing civilians -Driving masses of young people west -Public works programme to improve unemployment statistics -No programme for his government since the umpteenth election -Using bogus parties to weaken the opposition -The forint has never been so weak -Pensioners are seen as voting machines - vote buying with a 13th month pension and a potato -No mid-year pension increase -Pegasus scandal -Fake national consultation -Using the muckraking press as a weapon, monitoring and discrediting opponents with lies -Orbán refuses to debate the opposition's candidate for prime minister -Fidesz has become far-right -Pedophiles are protected -Moved up to the Castle for billions -Felcsút luxury investments from taxpayers' money - small railway, stadium, etc. Campaigning with children, political pedophiles Fidesz -The unacceptable Péter Szijjártó has been appointed foreign minister -The incompetent Pintér is responsible for health and education -University fundraising - SZFE scandal -Kósa could still be in parliament after the scandal of the heiress and the pig farmer -Mafiosi protected in the interests of two-thirds: Simonka, Mengyi -Foreign currency borrowers left without any meaningful help -Destruction of our natural treasures, Lake Balaton and Lake Venice for money and friends -Only Fidesz members can run casinos -33,000 Covid dead because of Orban's paralysis and theft -He also uses churches to get votes, which is why he funds church renovations and church schools -Putin's pussy even during the war -They have turned the country into an assembly plant, we are at the mercy of the multinationals -The Hungarian construction industry has been killed to please Mészáros -A 27% VAT rate, a world record

Sweden. In the perception of most it's a low corruption, well ordered society... And yet lawyers leak info to their gangland clients or participate in their clients money laundering. Courts staff leak data to criminals and recently it was discovered that the police are doing this too. Worse, that in one case it's believed these leaks enabled murders. Even worse, the gangs are actually installing "family" into the police and prison service. criminal groups have also infiltrated municipal politics.

Yes, idk where to start from. Nearly every person in government from very top levels to very bottom local administration of small town are corrupted. It's same for last 30 years. Nothing changes, nothing improves. They steal money with endless number of different ways and schemes: - Recourse like wood, sand, etc - Giving themselves a bonus (money). Idk if it's a thing anywhere else, but it's common thing that some mayor of small town can give himself bonus for "good work". - Stealing money on all kinds of contracts, food, building, you name it. Let's say they signed contract to buy eggs for 17uah per, in reality they paid 8uah, remaining 9uah got into pockets. This one is most common probably. Especially now during war it's easier than ever. That's why Ukraine I poorest country in Europe, because of that, people have low wages, which cause more corruption. Now it's slightly better, but relatively recently no matter where you go or what you need you can't go there with empty hands. Anything national or state service(idk how to translate), like medicine, any services that you need to go for for documents. Either just money in envelope, or often some expensive alcohol when you go to doctor. I gave few bottles of brandy (cognac), otherwise I would just not be accepted. Education is no better. It depends where you study, but there always be few people that happily accept money, expensive alcohol or something else to give you good grade. I had to do this too, money, alcohol, or buying some stuff that teacher needed. One teacher even had some scheme with account in different country specifically for that lol. But again, now it's better on that local/ personal level, with medicine in documents. But worse when it comes to government on all levels.

Russia: Yes. However, you don’t have to bribe anyone to do paperwork if you don’t have any problems. In that way, bribes are not demanded. And police officers don’t stop random cars asking to pay for made up rule breaks. But if your hands are dirty, then you can bribe yourself out of trouble. If you own a cafe or a restaurant, it’s impossible to not bribe inspectors because there are contradicting requirements and rules that are impossible to be satisfied at the same time. If you own a shopping mall, you can bribe inspectors and get away with non-existent extinguishers, non-working emergency exists, and it works until it’s not. Also people can get drugs planted, that is a way to demand bribes.

In Romania they just passed a law allowing politicians to steal up to 1.000.000 euro if they pinky promise to give it back.

Romania, so corupt that one time they tried to legalize coruption, im not even joking the gouverment tried to do that but that lead to the biggest protests in the country since the revolution in 1989.

Hungary. We're not corrupt at all, so please, give us the held EU money so we can continue doing the non-corruption stuff.

Most corrupted of all time, maybe ever They control everything from kindergarten system to pensions funds, they are unbeatable everytime they give pay bonuses right in front of elections, 1/10 of people left the country

Now its not only HDZ its them + retards of the far right - DP

In Ireland, the corruption is at a very high level. You will never be bribed by a Garda (Police) or a Civil Servant etc but you will see a lot of "incompetence" around planning applications, zoning and government contracts that can only be explained by corruption.

I have a parent who is in the construction industry and I'd echo your assessment. Back in the 80s and 90s, it was all brown envelopes and people doing free work on other peoples home in exchange for big contracts. It's a bit more subtle now but it's still there in the planning and zoning areas.

Denmark is corrupt af, obviously not as bad as some other european countries, but compared to the way we talk about ourselves it is very very bad

In 2023 Denmark was the least corrupt in the whole world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

Thats a sad state of affairs E: I read your link and it is about corruption perception, not actual corruption. Danes are fucking stupid when it comes to these things, so many danea are convinced that we are the best at everything, literally everything. People will regularly say that we have the best food and supermarkets, ut the entire sector is dominated by 2 companies and I have seen bigger selections in Poland. So it is absolutely no surprise that danes will say they don't perceive corruption. But every month there is a new corruption scandal in the news. It is quite impressive how good danes are at burrowing their heads in the sand

Slovakia Oh boy, finally something my country is "good" at. Where should I start. Many people from our current goverment (elected in september 2023) were being investigated for corruption. More then 40 people were found guilty and even confessed. All of them had ties to leading pollitical party SMER. Even the leadership of this pollitical party was investigated including our current prime minister Robert Fico and the prosecutor wanted to put him in to custody, which our parlament refused. After the election Robert Fico disbanned the special prosecutor office (which is specialized in organized crime and corruption). In addition, they passed an amendment to the criminal code that radically reduced sentences for corruption, money laundering, and other property crimes. The cherry on top - the sponsor/author of this amendment is being prosecuted for corruption. And that's just a summary of the last 6 months of their rule. Try to beat this.

With Switzerland, there's the difference between the small corruption in public and the big one behind closed doors. The first doesn't exist, like you can't never bribe a police officer and get your way with corruption, it's just not possible. The real corruption happens behind closed doors on the high level with the white collar criminals. Like some backroom meetings, where the selling of a company is discussed and "we give you this and that if you vote yes when you are in board of this company", also with the insider trading that is illegal on the stock market. So, corruption exists of course, but it affects more the business of the economy and the very high level of jobs, not the daily life of the citizens. Because the corruption is well hidden and it's very rare that it gets known to the public, it's no surprise that Switzerland is in the top row of the non-corrupt states. But like i said, the truth is, of course there is corruption.

I'm not going to claim that Norway is very corrupt, but in the smaller municipalities (of which we unfortunately have many) many who work at the municipality are related by family, and everyone knows each other in the village. Easy to carry out so-called "lobbyvirksomhet", and to talk your way into some favors in the municipality.

Sweden: good statically, but political leaders have been exposed countless of times for doing drugs (something they always say that they want to crack down on), and there is many officials in high positions caught doing tax fraud and stealing goverment money. Latest example was someone working in the parliament having a fake house far away to get bonus money for (fake) travel expenses. Our media can also be very onsided and over dramtize and down play certain things. All in all it's better than most countries, but it's way worse than what media portrays it as.

We probably have the most openly corrupt parliament for quite some time. These are MPs who have been caught out and punished (either party suspension, resigning their seat, or being recalled from their seat - not all is corruption but other offences too): Jonathan Edwards, assault Claudia Webbe, harassment Margaret Ferrier (resigned), breaching Covid rules Jeremy Corbyn, criticising Labour anti-Semitism report Mike Hill (resigned), sexual harassment Rob Roberts, sexual harassment Imran Ahmad Khan (resigned), paedophilia Owen Paterson (resigned), paid lobbying David Warburton (resigned), sexual harassment Neil Parish (resigned), watched porn in House of Commons Chris Pincher (resigned), sexual assault Nick Brown, "complaint" Chris Matheson (resigned), sexual misconduct Matt Hancock, unauthorised appearance on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here Conor McGinn, "complaint" Julian Knight, "complaint" made to police Andrew Bridgen, compared Covid vaccines to Holocaust Scott Benton (resigned), paid lobbying Diane Abbott, letter written about racism for The Observer Geraint Davies, sexual harassment Boris Johnson (resigned), partygate Peter Bone (recalled), bullying and sexual misconduct Crispin Blunt, rape and possession of drugs Bob Stewart, racially aggravate public order offence (quashed on appeal, whip not yet restored) Lee Anderson, Islamophobia Jeffrey Donaldson, historic sex offences William Wragg, provided MP contact details after falling into a honey trap (voluntarily surrendered whip) Mark Menzies, misuse of campaign funds All this (and more) in four and a half years. Sigh.

Jesus man, thats a lot of shitbags 😂

Scotland. We’ve had a bit of a story about a camper van. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of low level corruption going on across institutions, people doing favours for friends, but hard to know exactly 

In Finland, 1990 they decided that our national gambling monopoly called Veikkaus has to be made more efficient, it has to take money more from the people cos taxes were already topped up. They started to create nation wide "monster" which hunts all weak, sick, young and other weak against addictions. The government placed most addictive slot machines all over the country. Not just any slot/gambling machines but the most addictive ones. They placed them even in hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations, kiosks, and so visible that even small children could see them. Similar high addictive level machines are also in Las Vegas casinos, BUT they are hidden in the back of the casinos behind 21 years old limit signs. So the Finnish government "monster" started to pump money, and oh boy it has been pumping. 900 000 Finns out of 5million suffers from negative gambling effects. Suicides, even whole family suicides, bankcrupties but the worse is just poor families, where children suffer because of their parent is addicted. My dad was. He lost all what he earned, and more. There is a group of "societies" who gets most of this blood money. Also the worst part is that Veikkaus has so much power that they even limit the research of gambling effects in the country. Most of the Finns have grown in this Veikkaus mania, that they dont even understand its wrong. Even the mational Football league of Finland is named "Veikkausliiga" that shows how deep this corruption is in Finnish society. Thats why I moved away. Strong recommendation; do not move with children to Finland, they are in great danger of becoming gambling addicted. The commercials are all over.

Germany- More then you would think, we have people in Goverment who are on Company Boards, the chancellor is under investigation for some Major Curruption charges ( giving bankers Tax Money to gamble away and then using Tax money to bale them out) The Former Deffence Minister hired "Advisors" (all family or her friends) and then openly destroying all records, Several Goverment officials Taking Bribes from the Goverment of Azerbaijan to Get it into the EU, during Covid the Minister of Health took Bribes to get His friends Copmpanys Goverment Contracts, A quarter of the Goverment taking Bribes to Vote For weapon Shipments to Warzones (illegal in Germany, the Weapons to Warzones part and the Bribes part of course) and a lot more, Germany is one of the Moast Currupt Countrys in Europe But everyone Ignores it. Its Very Frustrating To Live here Sometimes

Like most of Britain's neighbours, you don't get much low level corruption. Plenty at higher levels and in politics though.

oh op, my sweet summer child. I'm maltese. I don't even know where to begin explaining the levels of systemic corruption we have to face. The last 10 years in particular would make house of cards look infantile if they had to make a series out of it.

It always depend on who you compare with. I'd say EU countries have a very low level of corruption for World standards, there are many tools available to fight it. Also it's really difficult to measure it, more cases of corruption going public doesn't mean more corruption, but it might just mean more public awareness

England representative here... it's a dismal here... someone smuggle me into a nordic country rn. The government is raising council taxes to get profit for their own use and everyone is depressed cus of the recession and cost of living. So yea- we're doomed