Greece Tackling Graft Better than Spain

Crisis-hit Greece has taken steps to fight corruption while Spain is dragging its feet on tackling bribery, graft watchdog Transparency International said as it released its annual report Tuesday.

"That's one of the most interesting issues for us, the difference between Spain and Greece," Finn Heinrich, lead researcher of the group's 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, told Agence France Presse.

"You see two quite different responses to corruption in the context of economic crisis, and I think it bodes much better for Greece's prospects then for Spain's."

Spain slipped from number 30 last year to number 40 on the group's list of 177 countries. Greece was further down the list but improved from number 94 to the 80th spot.

"The last couple of years both of them went down because of the euro crisis, which revealed the corruption was one of the contributors to the crisis but also exacerbated it," said Heinrich.

"But this year for the first time Greece is getting better, and I think it shows the government is tackling corruption head-on there. There have been high-profile prosecutions, they have put in place somebody working closely with the prime minister who is coordinating anti-corruption activities."

Heinrich said that "this is not happening in Spain, quite the opposite".

"More and more scandals are getting revealed and the government is not seen as taking those seriously. And those scandals even involve very high-level government people."

"The biggest scandal right now is funding of the governing political party by high-level business interests, particularly those in the construction sector.

"There is the link to the euro-crisis because obviously construction was one of the key bubbles in Spain which then showed that this growth pattern and economic pattern of the country was not sustainable."

Heinrich cited as one example a major corruption case centered on the Spanish resort of Marbella that led to scores of convictions.

"The mayor of the city ruled it as its own fiefdom, where he basically, together with big construction companies, ignored the building laws and got money for expanding the city way past what was legally allowed," Heinrich said.

"That's just one example, and there are many, many more."