Corruption in Thailand

Corruption in Thailand is a national issue. Thai law provides criminal penalties for conviction of official corruption. Thailand's 2014 military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), stated that fighting corruption would be one of its main focus points, a common practice for military dictatorships following Thailand's frequent military coups. Despite the promises, officials engaged in corrupt practices with impunity, and the NCPO engaged in corrupt practices itself.

Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), gave Thailand a score of 36. When ranked by score, Thailand ranked 101st 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 worst score was 12 (ranked 180), and the average score was 43. For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among Asia Pacific countries was 87, the lowest score was 17 and the average score was 45.

"Even though Thailand has the legal framework and a range of institutions to effectively counter corruption, all levels of Thai society continue to suffer from endemic corruption."

In the 2022 edition of its Best Countries rankings, U.S. News & World Report evaluated global perceptions of 85 developed countries based on 73 country attributes. On the country attribute "Not Corrupt", countries were scored on a scale from 1 to 100 and then ranked by score. Thailand, with a Not Corrupt score of 64.3, was ranked #35 in the list of least corrupt countries, where the #1 country (Sweden, with a score of 100) was perceived to be the least corrupt of all. Among the 16 Asian countries evaluated, Thailand was ranked #4., where the Asian country with the best Not Corrupt score, Japan, received a 99.9.