WHEN it comes to corruption, Venezuela has long languished near the bottom of the international league table. According to the latest index of perceptions of corruption compiled each year by Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog, only eight out of the list of 176 countries were seen as more graft-ridden. Even places like Haiti and Zimbabwe ranked higher. The organisation’s Venezuela chapter found that 65% of respondents in a recent survey thought corruption had worsened in the previous two years. Well over half thought government measures to tackle it were ineffective.Enter Nicolás Maduro, elected as president in April after Hugo Chávez died of cancer before he could be sworn in for a third six-year term. Mr Maduro, a former bus driver who was Chávez’s foreign minister, has said that fighting corruption is a priority for his government. Several mid-level officials have been arrested.One of the biggest cases concerns Ferrominera, a state-owned iron-ore miner and processor in the south-eastern state of Bolívar. After years of protests by its workers, some of whom were prosecuted for their pains, Ferrominera’s chairman, Radwan Sabbagh, was arrested in...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com
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