Out of the top ten oil producing countries last year, Iraq - with 3.47 billion barrels of oil per day in output - ranked ninth out of 198 countries on the latest Corruption Risk Index (CRI) produced by UK-based global risk analytics firm Verisk Maplecroft.

“High” and “extreme” corruption risks were reported in Iran (which ranked 26) and Kuwait (109), research showed.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer last year after the US - with 11.3 billion bpd – was also ranked as “high risk”, according to the index.

Research showed that the third-largest oil producer in the world, Russia - with 11.2 billion bpd, has seen a “dramatic” worsening of its ranking, the country coming in at number 10, “due to its lack of transparency with regards to major infrastructure and energy projects”.

Russia is likely to experience “negative implications for its already opaque business environment”, the report said.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be one the world’s most corrupt regions due to its “lack of institutional capacity to enforce anti-corruption measures”, with oil-producer Nigeria placed at number 21 on the corruption index, Verisk Maplecroft said.

The region was once again revealed to be “the most severely afflicted”, as the Democratic Republic of Congo ranked first, followed closely by Somalia, Central African Republic, Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea, according to the report.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil (94) posed“high risks” to investors for the prevalence of corruption amid the ongoing Petrobras scandal, which involved corruption allegations against high level executives.

The region has also failed to see improvement in combating corruption in Mexico (64), a country which last year produced 2.79 billion bpd, “which continues to pose an extreme risk to business in this area”.

China (76) and India (70) also pose a “high risk” and “extreme risk”, respectively, for the prevalence of corruption.

Meanwhile, the “low risk” countries in the CRI are predominantly highly developed countries, the majority of which are European nations, with Denmark being ranked as the word’s least corrupt nation.

Liechtenstein (197), New Zealand (195), Andorra (195), Finland (193), Norway (193), Germany (192), San Marino (189), Luxembourg (189) and Iceland (189) followed closely, analysts said.

“The best-performing countries are largely corruption-free, thanks to strong systems of governance, the existence of laws providing criminal penalties for corruption that are consistently implemented,” according to the analysis.

“Specifically, Germany has strengthened anti-corruption provisions on financial support extended by the official export credit agency and has also tightened the rules for public tenders.

“Nevertheless, recent scandals in Europe and the US show that corruption is not confined to less-developed economies.”

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‘Corruption high’ in major oil nations