Is Britain more corrupt than it thinks?

Britons love to lecture the world about integrity and the rule of law, but the News of the World phone hacking scandal has laid bare a web of collusion between money, power, media and the police.Far from the innocent, upright democracy of its self-image, Britain is showing a seamy side that anti-corruption campaigners say is getting worse and may be politically explosive as society becomes more unequal due to the financial and economic crises.
Behind a facade of probity, London offers a haven for oligarchs and despots, a place where foreign media magnates have bought access to and influence over the government.The scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch's media empire has already destroyed a newspaper, cost two top police officers their jobs, seen the arrest of powerful media figures and embarrassed the prime minister and political elite.

But it points to a bigger problem in British society -- overly cozy relationships among elites that are ethically dangerous, even when they do not involve outright criminality.Britain says it has been bolstering its legal and regulatory system. Just this month a new law on bribery tightening rules for UK firms operating abroad entered force.
But some of the world's leading transparency campaigners say that the hacking scandal exemplifies unhealthy links between power and money."The bottom line... is that for some time there has been undue influence on UK governments and public policy by powerful private interests," says Daniel Kaufmann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC.
"It is ... often a more sophisticated form of high-level political corruption. It may not be strictly illegal -- or it may be more subtle -- but that does not mean it is not very costly for society or the economy," said Kaufman, a former director of the World Bank Institute and creator of the closely watched Worldwide Governance Indicators.
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