The fight against corruption is seen as weakening across the globe in 2025, with “bold, accountable leadership” in decline, according to Transparency’s International’s newly released Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). 

The CPI ranks 182 countries and territories using a 0–100 scale, where 0 indicates a highly corrupt public sector and 100 indicates a very clean one. It draws on 13 independent data sources that capture expert and business perceptions of corruption in the public sector. 

The global average of that score dropped for the first time in more than a decade, the advocacy group said Tuesday. While 12 nations scored above 80 in 2015, today only five countries remain above that benchmark. 

The trend is particularly worrying as concerns over corruption in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and other nations appear to be on the rise, Transparency International said. 

The organization said that in almost two-thirds of countries whose CPI scores have significantly declined since 2012, there has been a pattern of restricting freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. Among the 50 countries with significant CPI declines, 36 have also seen reductions in civic space, TI found. 

Such restrictions make it harder for journalists, civil-society groups, and whistleblowers to expose abuses, and easier for corrupt officials to operate without consequences, TI noted. 

Since 2012, 829 journalists have been murdered in non-conflict zones worldwide with more than 150 of those killings seemingly linked to news coverage of corruption. More than 90% of journalists murdered for investigating corruption were in countries scoring below 50, according to TI, which cited homicides in Brazil, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and Iraq. 

In publishing the index, Transparency International highlighted the falling CPI scores of Russia, which has been accused of democratic backsliding and election interference in other nations, and the United States, which under the Trump administration has pulled back from enforcing its primary law against foreign bribery, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and cut funding for anti-corruption efforts around the globe. 

“At a time when we’re seeing a dangerous disregard for international norms from some states, we need to protect a rules-based global order that is grounded in transparency, accountability to citizens, and respect for human rights,” the group’s chair, François Valérian, said in the CPI release.

Read more at Transparency International