Venezuela hits absolute bottom as most corrupt country in Latin America

Headline.com reporters: According to a Transparency International (TI) report just released, 86% of Venezuelans consider the level of corruption in Venezuela has increased in the past three years.

And, one in two Latin Americans consider corruption has increased as a result of the global financial crisis, according to TI's Global Corruption Barometer 2010 released today. According to the report, Venezuela ranks bottom in the region.

Transparency International (TI) is a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=99443

I've been travelling so haven't been able to post much. Lot's of VZ news in last week or so. I am surprised it hasn't been posted here yet since this forum is about sharing news and exchanging information. Oh well. I'll share it.

Seeing through Transparency International

Pledged to fight corruption worldwide, the NGO is in danger of revealing its own political agenda in a recent report on Venezuela

Calvin Tucker
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 May 2008 17.00 BST

The credibility of Transparency International, a global "non-partisan" organisation which "promotes transparency in elections, in public administration, in procurement and in business", is on the line. Their latest report on Venezuela, which was produced after months of research, is factually inaccurate in almost every respect. TI say that they "stand by their report" and stand by the person who compiled the data, an anti-Chávez activist who backed the 2002 military coup against democracy.

The full report, dated April 28 2008 and titled Promoting Revenue Transparency examined the published accounts of oil companies in 42 different countries, and ranked them according to whether they were of high, medium or low transparency. Venezuela's state-owned oil firm PDVSA was given the lowest possible ranking. Transparency International say that "comprehensive corporate reporting diminishes the opportunities for corrupt officials to extort funds".

PDVSA was directly accused of failing to disclose basic financial information such as their revenues and how much royalties they paid, and of not producing properly audited accounts. The international corporate media considers TI to be a reliable source, despite the fact that almost all their funding comes from western governments and big business. The British government is one of the major donors, contributing £1 million in 2007. Other donors include the US government, Shell and Exxon Mobil. Unsurprisingly, TI's damning report was seized upon by rightwing newspapers and websites and used as another stick with which to beat Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez.

When Dan Burnett, a New York-based blogger who runs the popular Oil Wars website, read the TI report, he almost choked on his cornflakes. Burnett had been analysing PDVSA's accounts for several years, and regularly writes about the financial information that TI claims does not exist ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/22/seeingthroughtransparencyin

Also I looked up this Oil Wars website. Good stuff, I will post some things from it.

It's not that simple. Overall, PDVSA isn't doing well, and one reason is the way its managers tend to deviate from standard industry practices. If President Chavez understood how it really is, he would have a cow.