GRP releases the 2021 Global Corruption Index (GCI)
Global Risk Profile (GRP), a Swiss company specializing in third-party risk management related services, has released the 4th edition of the Global Corruption Index (GCI), assessing corruption and other white-collar crimes throughout the world.
According to GRP, the GCI has adopted new variables for evaluating white collar crimes, including data on banking secrecy, sanctions, international cooperation and beneficial ownership transparency. Therefore, some European countries, such as the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg would have been pulled down by higher risk results concerning “white-collar crimes”. For example, while Luxembourg ranks 9th in the sub-index “corruption”, its position falls to 59 in the sub-index “white-collar crimes”, an impressive gap impacting its overall GCI ranking (17th).
In the overall ranking, Switzerland falls from its 8th to the 12th place, losing its place in the top 10. As experts from GRP told the Tribune de Genève newspaper, Switzerland’s poor performance can be partly explained by the country’s international financial and insurance service providers: “In the case of Switzerland, there is much to be done in terms of transparency. It has gaps in compliance with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).” In particular, Switzerland would lag behind in terms of due diligence obligations towards clients and the prohibition for financial institutions to hold anonymous accounts.
GRP emphasised that the 2021 edition of the GCI is also the first to be issued based on data collected post-declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although a causal effect would not be inferred, it should be noted that the health crisis runs in parallel to a higher perception of corruption and an overall decline in government effectiveness between 2020 and 2021. The Global Corruption Index 2021, including Interactive maps and data, is freely available on the GRP’s website.