stylistic:tone, stylistic:style_transfer
Corruption

In 2005, the World Bank listed Kazakhstan as a corruption hotspot, on a par with Angola, Bolivia, Kenya, Libya and Pakistan. In 2012, Kazakhstan ranked low in an index of the least corrupt countries and the World Economic Forum listed corruption as the biggest problem in doing business in the country. A 2017 OECD report on Kazakhstan indicated that Kazakhstan has reformed laws with regard to the civil service, judiciary, instruments to prevent corruption, access to information, and prosecuting corruption. Kazakhstan has implemented anticorruption reforms that have been recognised by organizations like Transparency International.

In 2011, Switzerland confiscated US$48 million in Kazakhstani assets from Swiss bank accounts, as a result of a bribery investigation in the United States. US officials believed the funds represented bribes paid by American officials to Kazakhstani officials in exchange for oil or prospecting rights in Kazakhstan. Proceedings eventually involved US$84 million in the US and another US$60 million in Switzerland.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Kazakh Anti-Corruption Agency signed a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty in February 2015.

Transparency International 's 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), gave Kazakhstan a score of 39. When ranked by score, Kazakhstan ranked 93rd among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the average score was 43, and the worst score was 11 (ranked 180). For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among Eastern European and Central Asian countries was 53, the average score was 35 and the lowest score was 18.