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By KELIN DILLON

Anti-corruption organization Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2024 on Tuesday, Feb. 11, announcing that Mexico plummeted to 140th place out of the 180 countries in the CPI – the nation’s lowest ranking in history.

The CPI notably aims to assess corruption in countries’ public sectors and is considered the primary international standard for this measurement.

Mexico also dropped five points in its index rating to 26 out of 100 – where 0 signifies the most corruption and 100 the least – after several consecutive years of holding a 31 out of 100 rating.

In Latin America, Mexico only reached a rating higher than Guatemala, Paraguay, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which have respective ratings of 25, 24, 22, 16, 14 and 10.

According to Transparency International, much of Mexico’s CPI rerank stems from the nation’s historic judicial failures, as “the weakness and opacity of the judiciary in the region has also limited the effective application of the law and access to justice.”

“The judiciary in Mexico, which has the lowest score so far, has failed to take action against emblematic corruption cases, such as Odebrecht and Segalmex (Mexican Food Security, a state-owned company),” said the Germany-based organization.

Transparency International likewise pointed out that, according to 2023 figures from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), 83 percent of Mexicans said corruption in Mexico is a “frequent or very frequent” problem.

The transparency group went on to highlight that alongside Brazil, Mexico held the most murders of environmental activists in 2024.

With the nation’s new ranking in mind, Mexico currently sits as the worst-ranked and rated country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and second-to-last in the G20, only behind Russia.