Greece, Italy Rank as Europe's Most Corrupt Countries

When you have terrible governments and awful laws, corruption might actually make the place tolerable

Greece is considered Europe's most corrupt country, ranking roughly on par with Colombia and Swaziland in an annual global survey of perceived corruption released Wednesday.

Transparency International, a corruption watchdog, ranked Greece 94th out of 176 countries in the 2012 corruption perceptions index, which surveys economic experts about the perceived level of public sector corruption. Last year, Greece ranked 80th.

Using a scale introduced for this year's report, Transparency International ranked the countries between zero, which is "highly corrupt," and 100, for "very clean." Two-thirds of the 176 countries surveyed scored below 50, including Italy and Greece from among the 17 members of the European Union that use the euro. Italy ranked 72nd.