The Nordic countries took all five top places in the 2013 annual survey of 157 countries, with New Zealand sharing the leading position with Denmark.  Norway however,  came in last of the bunch, taking fifth place in the survey, although still rated “very clean”. 

 

“We are a little behind the other Scandinavian countries,” said Tor Dølvik, special advisor to Transparency International in Norway. “We have and some serious scandal cases in recent years, which affect the general opinion about standards in the public sector.” 

 

He said that polls suggested that Norwegians felt public contracts were too often awarded on the basis of personal friendships, and that ‘insiders’ sometimes had an unfair advantage. 

 

Transparency International, he said, was running anti-corruption programmes at a local government and state level to counter this tendency. 

 

“We are very satisfied that we are in the same level as the other Scandinavian and Nordic counties, which means that we don’t have this small corruption in our daily life,” he added.