Anti-Corruption Conference to Open on Monday

EghtesadOnline: Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture is scheduled to host the Fifth Anti-Corruption Conference at Tehran’s IRIB International Conference Center on Monday.

News ID: ۷۸۵۱۰۶

08 December 2019

The event will be held concurrent with the International Anti-Corruption Day.

According to a TCCIM official, Hassan Forouzanfard, roots of corruption, challenges in combating corruption and solutions will be discussed during the conference.

Officials from the judicial system of Iran, the executive branch, parliamentarians, private sector representatives and economic players are expected to attend the conference, TCCIM reported on its website, according to Financial Tribune.

The conference will start at 8:30 a.m. and end at 12:30 p.m. local time.

The International Anti-Corruption Day has been observed annually on Dec. 9 since the passage of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption on Oct. 31, 2003, to raise public awareness for anti-corruption.

According to the latest report released by the global graft monitor Transparency International, Iran’s score on the Corruption Perceptions Index dropped two points in 2018 to reach 28 out of 100.

The index scale indicates that zero is perceived to be highly corrupt while 100 is considered very clean.

Iran's ranking also fell by eight places as it is now ranked 138 out of 180 countries under review.

More than two-thirds of countries scored below 50, with an average score of only 43.

Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index, Transparency International’s flagship research product, has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption.

Founded in 1993, Transparency International is an international non-governmental organization based in Berlin, Germany. Its nonprofit purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil societal anti-corruption measures and prevent criminal activities arising from corruption.

Because corruption is willfully hidden, it is impossible to measure it directly; instead, proxies for corruption are used. Corruption is a very difficult phenomenon to measure. There have been many attempts to solve this problem, but they've all come up with limitations.

CPI has been criticized on the basis of its methodology.

According to political scientist Dan Hough, three flaws in the index are as follows:

- Corruption is too complex to be captured by a single score. The nature of corruption in rural Kansas will, for instance, be different from that in the city administration of New York, yet the index measures them in the same way.

- By measuring perceptions of corruption, as opposed to corruption itself, the index may simply be reinforcing stereotypes and clichés.

- The index only measures public-sector corruption, leaving out private actors. This, for instance, means the Libor scandal or the VW emissions scandal are not counted.