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Bribes, back handers and nepotism: they hamper economic development, undermine justice and prevent democracy. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2014 ranks countries in the world according to how much corruption there is in the public sector.

Corruption is most likely to be seen in countries where:

Wages are lower (officials are more likely to take a bribe)

Job opportunities are scarce

There's a lack of transparency and accountability

How does it correlate with other important social issues like inequality?

Click and drag the slider to switch between Corruption and Inequality

Key things to note:

Northern European countries like Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are both far more equal than most other places, AND also top of the list when it comes to corruption.

North America scores well on corruption (it isn't very corrupt at all), yet there is still huge disparity between the rich and the poor.

Another anomaly is that of the African continent: South Africa is the second least equal countries, after the Seychelles. Yet it's not THAT bad when it comes to corruption; in fact surrounding countries on the continent fare much worse.

The GINI coefficient is a way of measuring inequality, where 0 means there's perfect equality (everybody has the same wage) and 100 means there's perfect INequality).

Highlighting corruption DOES matter

The report explains: "Bribes and back deals don't just steal resources from the most vulnerable – they undermine justice and economic development, and destroy public trust in government and leaders.

"A poor score is likely a sign of widespread bribery, lack of punishment for corruption and public institutions that don’t respond to citizens’ needs."

Here's the top ten least corrupt:

Denmark is the cleanest country out of all those surveyed in the Corruption Perceptions Index. And the ten WORST countries when it comes to corruption?

The most corrupt countries, according to the Index, are Somalia and North Korea.

How did we do?

You may believe that Cameron and Osborne are corrupt - but according to the 2014 release of a yearly corruption index, we're really very lucky.

The UK comes 14th on the list, out of 174, so we're not doing too badly.