Which Country Is the Sleaziest?

Sept. 6 -- Michelle Sieff admits she and her bosses shared a few chuckles over the expense report for her last trip abroad.

Sieff, an analyst for the global consulting company Eurasia Group, traveled to Nigeria in April, where she had to take a flight from the capital, Abuja, to the port city of Lagos.

She and her colleague had fought through the crowds of touts and con men at the airport, and had finally arrived at the terminal, when an airport official approached them.

He told her to give him $50, or else there would be no guarantee their luggage would get on the plane. He said it very directly, very matter-of-factly, she recalled — like it was "a routinized process."

But the plane she and her colleague were about to board would have only eight people on it — making it unlikely her luggage would be lost.

Still, Sieff gave him the cash. After all, the airport official was engaging in what is a well-known cost of business in Nigeria, she said — the taking of dash, or bribe money.

The dash even went into her expense report, she said — and her bosses hardly blinked. "Fifty dollars, Nigeria bribes," she said, with a mix of incredulity and amusement.

"[The official] didn't give me a receipt," she joked, "but I'm sure if I asked, I could have gotten one."

A Widespread Problem

While the dash is notorious, Nigeria is far from the only country suffering from corruption. Visitors to Mexico are warned about the mordida, and those to Morocco are told to watch out for baksheesh, while Cameroon has its cadeaux and Bangladesh its gush.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-graft watchdog group, recently released its annual Corruptions Perceptions Index, ranking 102 countries in order of their perceived level of corruption, with No. 1 being the least corrupt.

The last on the list was Bangladesh, but Nigeria was only one above, at No. 101. Cameroon came in at 89, while Mexico was a bit cleaner at 57, and Morocco was even better at 52.