Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan Fall Off Corruption Watchdog's Blacklist

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have not been listed in the 2009 Global Corruption Barometer, a ranking produced by the watchdog group Transparency International, which explained that it could not get hold of any reliable information about these countries.



NBCentralAsia observers say that in any case, neither the Uzbek nor the Turkmen government has appeared concerned about the consistently low rankings they have received in past years.



The report, released on June 3, did not mention the other three Central Asian states, either.



“The fact that Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan were not included in the report shows that investors and other business categories are not interested in these states,” Miklos Marschall, Transparency International's regional director for Europe and Central Asia, told the Uzbek service of RFR/RL service. “That is bad news for these countries.”.



Last year, Transparency International listed Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan among the 20 most corrupt countries in the world, which also included Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia and Zimbabwe.



Local observers say that the authoritarian regimes in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan do nothing about corruption because there is no public opinion or civil society to hold them to account.



“In an environment where information is closed off… a pyramid of the state corruption builds up,” commented one journalist in Uzbekistan.



Nor are these governments moved by the poor ratings they get from international studies to reform their economic systems, in which corruption is endemic.



Some analysts fear that the authorities in both countries will try to exploit their omission from the Transparency International report.



“I wouldn’t be surprised to see an article in the official press explaining that Uzbekistan was not listed in 2009 Global Corruption Barometer because there is no corruption in the country,” said an observer in Tashkent, adding that the government may claim recent anti-corruption legislation has been effective.



A media-watcher in northern Turkmenistan added, “Turkmenistan, where corruption has affected all areas of life, will not be upset, either.”



He said it was common for businesses to use bribery to obtain positive decisions from government officials in Turkmenistan.





(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service has resumed, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)