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Features

Is Iran Becoming More Corrupt?

March 12, 2018
Parvaneh Masoumi
4 min read
75.5 percent of Iranians rank the Ministry of Finance and state-owned banks as the third and fourth most corrupt institutions in Iran
75.5 percent of Iranians rank the Ministry of Finance and state-owned banks as the third and fourth most corrupt institutions in Iran
70.25 percent of Iranians rank politics, parties and elections as the fifth most corrupt field in Iran
70.25 percent of Iranians rank politics, parties and elections as the fifth most corrupt field in Iran

The majority of people in Iran believe that corruption in the country has increased in recent years and that local government and banks are among the most corrupt institutions in Iran, a government-led research group has found.

Looking at survey results from 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2015, the Network for Public Policy Studies (NPPS) sought a comprehensive picture of how Iranians viewed corruption, and particularly how that view had changed in the last nine years. Its report, entitled “An Account of How Corruption is Perceived in Iran” [Persian link] found that 89 percent of Iranians believe that corruption in the Islamic Republic has become worse and that local governments, the customs department, the Ministry of Finance and the country's banks are the most corrupt institutions in Iran.

The study shows that while in 2009 the percentage of Iranians who believed corruption existed in the country was 63.7, the percentage steadily increased to 73.5 in 2010, 80.3 in 2012 and 88.67 in 2016. The study also shows that Iranians believe that the most corrupt institutions are those “with financial and legal power.”

According to the latest survey in the study, only “9.8 percent of respondents say that when they have had to deal with a government office or institution they did not need to have connections with influential people to get what they wanted.”

The NPPS describes itself as “an academic peer-reviewed website under the supervision of the Center for Strategic Studies” of the Office of the President of the Islamic Republic.

 

Based on these surveys, Iranians rank the most corrupt institutions as follows:

1. Municipal governments , with 84.75 percent

2. Customs Bureau, with 84 percent

3. The Tax Bureau of the Ministry of Finance, with 78.5 percent

4. State-owned banks, with 75.5 percent

5. Politics, political parties and elections, with 70.25 percent

6. The Iranian judiciary and the courts, with 69.25 percent

7. Traffic police, with 63.75 percent

The Revolutionary Guards, the regular Armed Forces and the Mostazafan Foundation, a charitable foundation and the second largest commercial enterprise in Iran, also appear on two of the surveys. The 2009 survey shows that 27 percent of Iranians believed the Revolutionary Guards to be tainted with corruption — and this number increased to 35 percent in the 2010 survey. In both surveys, 18 percent of Iranians believed that corruption existed in the Armed Forces. Compared to the numbers for the Revolutionary Guards, this number show that Iranians have a more favorable view of the Armed Forces.

The NPPS surveys looked at two kinds of corruption — bribery and favoritism. However, without pointing to a specific organization or institution, the study adds that other kinds of corruption existed too.“Since some organizations are more prone to certain types of corruption, we must first identify the context of corruption in various organizations.”

The study highlights the importance of transparency. “The hidden types of corruption that are not reflected in these kinds of statistics are more dangerous,” says the study, adding: “and, of course, they will eventually find their way into how the public opinion perceives corruption” in Iran.

In 2015, the Iranian parliament’s Research Center reported that the members of 271 financial and economic entities in Iran believed that corruption in government agencies had increased in the years 2003 and 2004.

These findings generally agree with a January 2016 survey by the Information and Public Opinion Solutions LLC (iPOS) that indicated that most Iranians believe that corruption has become more widespread and that, according to 77 percent of those polled, banks are the most corrupt institution.

Is Iran Becoming More Corrupt?

Source: Information and Public Opinion Solutions LLC

 

In this survey, the justice system, municipalities and the police were ranked the most corrupt, after the banks.

According to the iPOS survey, a considerable majority of Iranians (71 percent) believe that corruption has become pervasive in the country. Only 15 percent think that corruption has not become epidemic.

 

Is Iran Becoming More Corrupt?

Source: Information and Public Opinion Solutions LLC

 

The study also differentiated between the views of people who live in urban environments and those who live in rural ones. “Analysis of responses based on demographic variables demonstrates that city dwellers are in a meaningful way more likely to believe in the pervasiveness of corruption (84 percent); those in rural areas are conversely less likely to believe that it’s epidemic (78 percent),” the study reads. And the research also indicates that the more people are informed, the more they are worried about corruption. “Moreover, respondents who express that they keep up with news regarding corruption either a lot or a great deal are more likely to believe that corruption is pervasive (89 percent) than [compared with] those who say that they either don’t at all follow corruption-related news, or follow it only a little." It added that the responses of those who took the poll and “either reported that they had no opinion and were not informed or registered otherwise vague responses were set aside.”

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