January 25 (SeeNews) - Transparency International said on Wednesday that Moldova lost 20 positions in the corruption watchdog's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) survey for 2016, ranking 123nd out of a total 176 countries and worst in Southeastern Europe (SEE).
Moldova achieved a score of 30 in the 2016 survey, versus 33 in 2015, where 0 equals the highest level of perceived corruption and 100 indicates the lowest one, Transparency International said.
The organisation calculated the CPI 2016 of Moldova using nine different data sources that capture perceptions of business people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector within the past two years.
The results in CPI 2016 mark Moldova's poorest performance in the last five years, Transparency International Moldova said in a press release.
"Although in 2016 in Moldova has adopted a number of anti-corruption draft laws, continued reforming anti-corruption bodies, and an agreement was reached with the IMF, a series of events talk about laws that are not working, democratic values are undermined and about Moldova turning into a captive state," Transparency International Moldova said in a separate statement.
Moldova has been trying to cope with a major banking crisis since November 2014, when about $1 billion (942 million euro) went missing from three of the country's banks. The sum was equal to about 16% of the impoverished ex-Soviet state's 2015 gross domestic product.
The decision makers that were responsible for the safety of the banking system and money laundering prevention have not been held accountable for the bank fraud, the organisation's local unit said.
The much-desired restart of the anti-corruption system has not reached its goal, it added, as Moldova still faces, for example, the misuse of the "personal data" clause in order to restrict access to public information and attempts to control the privacy of individuals under the pretext of preventing cyber crimes.
Also, whistleblowers, lawyers, judges, investigative journalists, civic activists and diplomats or representatives of development partners who signaled problems in the judiciary and anti-corruption systems are constantly intimidated in Moldova, the anti-graft NGO said.
In December, an European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) survey showed only 10% of Moldovans think that corruption levels in their country have dropped over the last four years, below the Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (EEC) average of 16%. The percentage of Moldovans considering that corruption levels are lower is in line with the opinion of respondents in Italy and is lower than the transition region average of 23%, the EBRD said in the 2016 edition of its Life in Transition Survey, which covers 34 countries.
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