CorruptionRadar
Country profile - BRA

Corruption in Brazil

27 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 55 (2022).

Grand: 34.9 Petty: 55.4 Latest observed: 2018

Brazil: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Brazil is Piauí (44.3/100), and the least corrupt is Ceara (62.8/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 27 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Brazil's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 55/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Piauí (SCI 44.3/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Ceara (SCI 62.8/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 34.9/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 55.4/100 (last directly observed in 2018).
  • Trend: Brazil's SCI moved from 60.1/100 (1995) to 55/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 27 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Brazil compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Brazil into 27 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 55 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 38 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.6 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 27 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

63 50 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (27)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Piauí BRAr109 1995-2022 44.3
2 Para BRAr105 1995-2022 48.6
3 Pernambuco BRAr113 1995-2022 50.4
4 Espirito Santo BRAr118 1995-2022 50.5
5 Maranhao BRAr108 1995-2022 51.3
6 Tocantins BRAr107 1995-2022 51.5
7 Rio de Janeiro BRAr119 1995-2022 52
8 Mato Grosso BRAr125 1995-2022 52.2
9 Acre BRAr102 1995-2022 52.9
10 Paraiba BRAr112 1995-2022 53.8
11 Amapa BRAr106 1995-2022 54.2
12 Sao Paulo BRAr120 1995-2022 54.3
13 Mato Grosso do Sul BRAr124 1995-2022 54.8
14 Parana BRAr121 1995-2022 54.8
15 Alagoas BRAr114 1995-2022 54.9
16 Rondonia BRAr101 1995-2022 55.4
17 Minas Gerais BRAr117 1995-2022 55.9
18 Rio Grande do Sul BRAr123 1995-2022 56.1
19 Bahia BRAr116 1995-2022 57
20 Distrito Federal BRAr127 1995-2022 57.8
21 Goias BRAr126 1995-2022 58.1
22 Amazonas BRAr103 1995-2022 58.6
23 Santa Catarina BRAr122 1995-2022 59.2
24 Roraima BRAr104 1995-2022 60.4
25 Sergipe BRAr115 1995-2022 60.6
26 Rio Grande do Norte BRAr111 1995-2022 62.4
27 Ceara BRAr110 1995-2022 62.8

Download Brazil

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download BRA.csv