Lawless Somalia and war-torn Afghanistan have topped a blacklist of the world’s most corrupt countries drawn up by the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI).

TI’s annual corruption index showed how countries devastated by conflict have become overrun by graft with Iraq, Sudan and Myanmar accounting for the three other states in the bottom five of the chart.

The Berlin-based organisation said that countries whose infrastructure had been “torn apart” by conflict needed help from outside to prevent a culture of corruption taking root.

“The international community must find efficient ways to help war-torn countries to develop and sustain their own institutions,” said TI’s head Huguette Labelle.

Overall, the 2009 corruption list is “of great concern,” the organisation said, with the majority of countries scoring under five in the ranking, which ranges from zero, highly corrupt and ten, which is very clean.

The most corrupt nation on Earth remained Somalia, the impoverished and war-torn Horn of Africa state that has been without a functioning government for two decades, notching up a score of 1.1 points.

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