LAHORE: Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan on Sunday said that countries with corrupt heads of state or government and ministers suffer bankruptcy and debt burdens, not due to bribes accepted by low level officials.
“When low level officials take bribes it creates problems for the citizens as speed money is like a tax on them but countries get bankrupted and indebted when the head of state/govt and his ministers are corrupt,” the prime minister said on Twitter.
He also shared a link to a “Memorandum on Establishing the Fight Against Corruption as a Core United States National Security Interest” recently issued by US President Joe Biden, directing his senior officials to conduct an interagency review process and develop a presidential strategy to improve the ability of executive departments to promote good governance, combat all forms of illicit finance, hold accountable corrupt elements, and their facilitators, and bolster capacity of domestic and international institutions to prevent corruption.
When low level officials take bribes it creates problems for the citizens as speed money is like a tax on them but countries get bankrupted and indebted when the head of state/govt and his ministers are corrupt. pic.twitter.com/hLPkSWMMvX
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) June 6, 2021
The beginning paragraph of the Memorandum reads: “Corruption corrodes public trust; hobbles effective governance; distorts markets and equitable access to services; undercuts development efforts; contributes to national fragility, extremism, and migration; and provides authoritarian leaders a means to undermine democracies worldwide.
“When leaders steal from their nations’ citizens or oligarchs flout the rule of law, economic growth slows, inequality widens, and trust in government plummets.”
It is pertinent to mention here that Transparency International (TI), an international non-governmental organisation based in Berlin, ranked Pakistan 124 out of 180 countries on a global corruption perceptions list.
According to the report, Pakistan lost four places in 2020 compared to 2019 and seven positions compared to 2018. In 2019, Pakistan ranked 120th on the global corruption list and 117th in 2018.
