Georgia third in Transparency International’s Government Defence Integrity index for Central, Eastern Europe

Transparency International has released its Government Defence Integrity Index (GDI) for 2020, the world’s leading assessment of corruption in government defence institutions, in which Georgia placed third in Central and Eastern Europe after Latvia and North Macedonia, with some of the least corruption risk in the region.

The GDI is designed to measure corruption risk in defence and security institutions. It assesses the existence, effectiveness, and enforcement of institutional safeguards to corruption across five key risk areas: financial, operational, personnel, political, and procurement. Georgia ranked third in politics, sixth in finance, and second in personnel, second in the operational category while it took six place in terms of procurement.

Georgia has received a score of 60 out of 100, placing it in the category of having ‘moderate risk of corruption in the field of defense’.

In the ranking, 100 points indicate the lowest risk of corruption, while 0 indicates the highest risk.

Five other countries from the Central and Eastern Europe region which also have a moderate risk of corruption are Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Macedonia. 

Latvia received the highest score – 67 (low risk) and Azerbaijan the lowest – 15 (critical risk) in the region.

The Government Defence Integrity Index (GDI) finds more than half of the 15 countries assessed in the region face a high risk of corruption in their defence and security sectors,” says Transparency International Defence and Security.

The 15 countries which were involved in the report are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Serbia and Ukraine.