Global bribery and corruption is so massive that it operates as a parallel economy. At the UK government’s anticorruption summit in 2016, IMF head Christine Lagarde quoted the most recent estimate of $1.5-trillion to $2-trillion (about 2% of global GDP) paid annually in bribes in developing and developed countries. While the direct economic costs of corruption were well known, she said, "the indirect costs may be even more substantial and debilitating, leading to low growth and greater income inequality". She added that corruption "undermines trust in government and erodes the ethical standards of private citizens". Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2016 found that over two-thirds of the 176 countries and territories in the index fell below the midpoint of their scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). They called the average score of 43 "paltry" and concluded that more than 6-billion people lived in countries with a serious corruption problem. Ar...
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