In a new report, the anticorruption group Transparency International (TI) says bribing public officials when doing business abroad is a regular occurrence.

According to a survey of 3,000 business executives from developed and developing countries, companies from Russia are seen as most likely to do that.

On November 2, the Berlin-based group released its 2011 “Bribe Payers Index,”  which ranks 28 leading international and regional exporting countries by the likelihood of their firms to bribe abroad.

Russia ranked 28th, scoring worse than China, Mexico, and India.

According to Robin Hodess, TI’s group director for research and knowledge, the fact that China and Russia are at the bottom of the index is a major worry.

“Of course it’s a concern, because the economy in both countries has been growing dramatically as has the level of investment coming from both,” she said. “In terms of their economic power abroad, it’s really matching their political power.”

The report itself says: “Given the increasing global presence of businesses from these countries, bribery and corruption are likely to have a substantial impact on the societies in which they operate and on the ability of companies to compete fairly in these markets.”

It pointed out that foreign-direct-investment (FDI) flows alone amounted to $120 billion in 2010 for both countries, more than five times the value of FDI outflows from Brazil and India combined.

Dutch, Swiss, Belgians, Germans, and Japanese companies get the top scores.

But TI says not one of the 28 countries surveyed is perceived as “wholly clean of bribery” and few have made a major improvement since the last bribery index in 2008.

via Russian, Chinese Companies ‘Most Likely’ To Offer Bribes.