money, property and politics
£100 billion of dirty money passes through UK systems and services every year. In England and Wales, 87,000 land titles are held through ambiguous corporate structures that hide the true owner.
Meanwhile, 76% of wealthy people use their influence on government for their own interests. Just 52 people accounted for 1/6 of all declared UK political donations between 2001 and 2016.
Corruption in health and public spending
The NHS loses £1.27 billion each year to fraud, bribery and corruption. Around the world, the annual cost of international corruption is estimated at £3.6 trillion in bribes and stolen money.
Corruption also hits poorer households hardest. In Paraguay, the poorest families pay nearly 13% of their income in bribes, twice the share paid by the richest families.
Corporate fines and political engagement
In February 2020, courts in the UK, US and France fined Airbus £3.6 billion for holding slush funds, “success payments” and lavish hospitality. The UK paid £820 million of that total, more than double all fines paid for criminal conduct in England and Wales in 2018.
In the same year, 73% of companies in the Corporate Political Engagement Index scored between “fairly poor” and “very poor” standards, placing them in Bands D to F.
Health systems, research and lost funding
Corruption in the health sector is linked indirectly to the deaths of an estimated 140,000 children each year. Up to 25% of public procurement funds are lost to corruption annually.
Governments spend about £7.5 trillion a year on healthcare worldwide, yet corruption drains around £500 billion, or 7%, from that sum. The WHO (World Health Organisation) estimates that £370 billion would be enough to give everyone in the world access to healthcare.
Each year, pharmaceutical companies, universities and other research groups run around 20,000 clinical trials, involving more than 2 million patients worldwide, at an estimated cost of over £60 billion. An estimated £85 billion in medical research funding is wasted every year, because trials that cost millions to run fail to add to medical progress when their results are never reported.
Conflict and security spending
Countries hit hardest by corruption are often trapped in deep conflict. ★Boko Haram is growing stronger in Nigeria because corruption has weakened the military.
Nigerian officials spend an estimated £670 million (N241.2 billion) each year on opaque, corruption-prone security funding known as “Security Votes”. That total is far above the Nigerian Army’s budget of N155.4 billion.
Boko Haram is a militant Islamist and terrorist group based primarily in northeastern Nigeria, with operations extending into the Lake Chad basin. Its official Arabic name is Jama’atu Ahl as-Sunnah li-Da’awati wal-Jihad.
The name “Boko Haram” is a Hausa-language phrase roughly translated as “Western education is forbidden”. It reflects the group’s ideological rejection of Western-style schooling, science, and democratic governance.
