This year, the study covers 194 jurisdictions.

The leaders of the ranking (where 0 stands for the lowest level of corruption risks and 100 means the highest), as in the previous year, are Norway (the total score of 5), New Zealand (10), Switzerland (10), Sweden (10), and Denmark (12).

The bottom of the ranking features North Korea (the score of 92 out of 100), Turkmenistan (89), Syria (88), Equatorial Guinea (87) and Yemen (83).

The most notable improvement of performance if compared to the previous year has been demonstrated by Kuwait (the score decreased by 4 points), the Seychelles (-4), Bulgaria (-4), Sierra Leone (-3) and Moldova (-3); conversely, the level of corruption risks has particularly increased in Azerbaijan (+3), El Salvador (+3), Kiribati (+2), Eswatini (+2) and Tunisia (+2).

According to the TRACE International experts, all in all, countries have shown rather sustainable performance in 2023: the average score has changed by 1.2 in a year, and the sharp deterioration in performance of some countries that was registered last year has slowed down.

The Russian Federation has been assigned the score of 63 and placed 151th, which is nine places lower than in 2022, 17 in 2021, and 24 in 2020. The country has been assigned the following score under each of the domains:

• The score of 58 under “Business interactions with government”, one point more than a year before;
• The score of 76 under “Anti-bribery deterrence and enforcement”, two points more than last year;
• The score of 59 under “Government and civil service transparency”, the same score as the last year;
• The score of 68 under “Capacity and civil society oversight”, seven points more than in 2022.

The TRACE International experts indicate the following reasons for the steady lowering of Russia’s placement in the ranking that have remained unchanged:

• A low degree of government interaction with business;
• A high expectation of bribes by business;
• A low quality of anti-bribery enforcement
• Lack of transparency of public bodies;
• A low degree of media freedom etc.

*The TRACE Matrix was developed by TRACE International in cooperation with RAND Corporation, a US analytical centre, and has been issued annually since 2014. The methodology for calculating the ranking was described in detail here.