BERLIN, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Africa's police officers and business executives are the most corrupt groups on the continent, a new survey said.
The anti-corruption watchdog group Transparency International ranked the two groups at the top of their annual African edition of the Global Corruption Barometer for the first time, among other findings. The annual survey interviewed more than 43,000 people across sub-Saharan Africa.
Transparency International said the abuse of power increases poverty around the world because the poorest people are almost twice as likely to pay bribes as those with more money.
The survey, done in partnership with Afrobarometer, also found about 75 million Africans paid a bribe over the last year, with most saying they did so to get access to basic necessities or to escape punishment from police or courts.
After police and business executives, government and tax officials were regarded as the most corrupt, followed by judges or magistrates, then politicians. Religious leaders were seen as the least corrupt.
The most corrupt nations were seen to be Liberia, where almost 70 percent of people surveyed said they had to pay a bribe to get basic needs, followed by Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
However, the good news was that some sub-Saharan countries had corruption rates near what is seen in the United States and Europe. Only 2 percent of people in Cape Verde said they bribed someone, while only 1 percent paid a bride in Botswana and Mauritius.
Just over a third of people interviewed said they didn't report bribery because they feared repercussions, and 14 percent said they didn't report bribes because they thought it wouldn't make a difference.
