Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The focus of attention of Kazakh experts is the situation with corruption in the country. According to the Agency for Combating Corruption, from January to November 2020, 2,100 corruption crimes were registered, which is 12% more compared to the same period of 2019. The amount of damage was about US$95 million.

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index 2019, compiled by the international non-governmental organization "Transparency International", Kazakhstan ranks 113th among the countries of the world. Kyrgyzstan 126th, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan share 153, Turkmenistan 165.

In turn, experts note the following trends in the corruption sphere of the country.

The fact of the annual increase in material damage from corruption is alarming. For 2015-2019 the amount of losses increased by 1.5 times. Over the past 10 years, the total identified material damage from corruption amounted to US$387 million. According to Global Financial Integrity, about US$167 billion was illegally exported from the country during this period.

At the same time, a significant part of the material damage is caused by: a) abuse of office; b) abuse of power or official powers by officials; c) official forgery (introduction of deliberately false information by a civil servant in official documents).

Experts draw attention to the fact that most of the 1717 corruption crimes registered in 2019 were committed: 1) by university employees (48%, 833 cases); 2) civil servants (35%, 603 cases); 3) employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (11%, 198 cases).

According to the research carried out by the Transparency Kazakhstan Foundation, 6 out of 14 regions of the republic and the city of Almaty were the most corrupt. These regions account for 60% of cases of corrupt interactions between citizens and state institutions (clinics, hospitals, police, kindergartens, universities, etc.).

In general, experts conclude that in a pandemic, waste and the risk of misuse of public funds have increased. In this regard, it is emphasized that the country’s authorities need to improve anti-corruption policies to eradicate the corruption of officials and reduce the scale of losses for the country’s economy.