Abstract

Corruption is any dishonesty undertaken by an individual or an entity entrusted with a position of authority to acquire benefits illegally or abuse power for personal gain (Luna-Pla et al., 2022). Corruption has been recognized as a global concern affecting economic growth and development, social stability, and public trust in institutions (Wen et al., 2023). Some common forms of corruption that have been documented are perpetrated by public institutions and commercial entities. In public institutions, the common forms of corruption include bribery, extortion, blackmail, influence peddling, illegal lobbying, collusions, gratuities, and graft (Bahoo et al., 2021). These practices violate public trust for personal gain and are considered criminal offenses nationally and internationally. Commercial entities may also engage in corrupt practices such as embezzlement, insider trading, money laundering, bribery, and price fixing (Bahoo et al., 2021). These practices undermine the principle of fair competition, distort the market process, and ultimately cause economic harm to a nation (Ho et al., 2019). The problem of corruption is aggravated by the fact there are no generally globally accepted practices to fight corruption. Several countries have recorded the highest level of corruption at public and private levels. Transparency International, a non-government entity that publishes an annual corruption index, ranks countries based on the level of perceived corruption in the public sector (Akimov et al., 2020). The organisation uses an index based on a scale of 100 for very clean and 0 for highly corrupt (Akimov et al., 2020). As at 2021, the three most corrupt nations in their respective order are Iraq, Columbia, and Mexico (Transparency International, 2021). Transparency International has also noted other countries with high levels of corruption, including Brazil, Russia, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, El Salvador, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, Equatorial Guinea, and Libya (Transparency International, 2021). In contrast, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Norway are some of the least corrupt nations (Transparency International, 2021).