A massive survey by Transparency International found more than a quarter of people have paid a bribe in the last 12 months. 
 
 The 2013 Global Corruption Barometer is the eighth edition of the survey, which collected responses from more than 114,000 people in 107 countries. This survey is different from the group’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index: It measures the views of everyday people, rather than experts weighing other surveys to determine the perception of graft. 
 
 Transparency International found that 27% of respondents have paid a bribe over the past year. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, for example, more than 75% of respondents reported paying bribes over the past year. However, two-thirds of the overall survey respondents said they refused to pay a bribe when asked. 
 
 “Bribe paying levels remain very high worldwide, but people believe they have the power to stop corruption and the number of those willing to combat the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery is significant,” said Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency International, in a statement. 
 
 The survey found police and the judiciary are the most prone to bribery: Overall, nearly one-third said their contacts with police included paying a bribe, and 24% said the same for the judicial system. 
 
 The situation is even worse in countries where police and judicial corruption is a known problem. In the 36 countries that view police as the most corrupt, an average of 53% of people were asked to pay a bribe by police, the survey found. And in the 20 that countries view the judiciary as the most corrupt, an average of 30% of people were asked by people in the judicial system to pay a bribe, it found. 
 
 More than half of those surveyed said corruption has increased over the past two years. When asked on a five-scale, where “corruption is a very serious problem” scores a five, the average score across all countries was 4.1, the survey found. People’s views on corruption are worst in Liberia and Mongolia, which each scored a 4.8. 
 
 Respondents in more than 50 countries reported that political parties as the most corrupt institution. Moreover, people have less faith in their leaders to solve the problem than in recent years: In 2008, when the global financial crisis happened, 31% said their government’s efforts to fight corruption were effective; this year the number dropped to 22%. 
 
 Write to Samuel Rubenfeld at Samuel.Rubenfeld@dowjones.com. Follow him on Twitter at @srubenfeld. ||||| File photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 The Washington Post's Max Fisher flags what I can only hope is the most disturbing anecdote from Transparency International's biennial "Global Corruption Barometer," a report that in general hasn't exactly made anyone feel good about the structures of business and society around the world*: 
 
 Corruption is so systemic in Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s poorest countries, that a local hospital charges mothers-to-be $5 every time they scream while giving birth. ... The $5 hospital screaming fee, purportedly a charge for “raising false alarm” but clearly aimed at separating mothers from their money, is no joke. Gross domestic product per capita is only $500 in Zimbabwe; average annual income per person is about $150. Zimbabwean hospitals also charge a $50 delivery fee. This means that, in a country where underemployment is 95 percent and poverty is rife, a mother who screams a few times during delivery might owe half her annual income after giving birth. 
 
 
 
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 You can read the full TI report here. The organization found that roughly a quarter of the global population paid some type of bribe in the past year. The disturbing hospital anecdote aside, the report—which surveyed more than 100,000 people in 100-odd countries—suggests that the police and the court system are the most prone to bribery. Overall, nearly one-third said their interactions with police included paying a bribe. 
 
 The country where corruption appears to be the most rampant is Sierra Leone, where 84 percent reported paying a bribe. The least? A four-way tie between Australia, Denmark, Finland and Japan at 1 percent. Seven percent of U.S. respondents said they'd paid a bribe. BBC News has a handy interactive here. ||||| It’s perhaps telling that the European Commission never before issued a report on corruption. Europe is, after all, largely considered one of the “cleanest” in the world, with the Scandinavian countries in particular always winning global rankings on transparency. 
 
 But the extent of corruption across Europe, revealed in a first-of-its kind report today, is “breathtaking,” European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström told Sweden's Goeteborgs-Posten newspaper. 
 
 The report says that none of the 28 members of the EU is immune from corruption, and that it costs their economies a total of $162.2 billion a year. 
 
 The findings hurt the image of the EU overall, but they’ll do more harm to certain countries, particularly those hit worst by economic crisis and the newest full-fledged members, Romania and Bulgaria. 
 
 Ms. Malmström said in a statement released ahead of the report that "corruption undermines citizens' confidence in democratic institutions and the result of law, it hurts the European economy, and deprives states of much-needed tax revenue,” she said. "Member states have done a lot in recent years to fight corruption, but today's report shows that it is far from enough." 
 
 The report is good news for the north. “Answers confirm a positive perception and low experience of bribery in the case of Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, and Sweden,” it notes. These residents say they’ve rarely paid a bribe – less than one percent – and the percentage of those saying they believe corruption is widespread at home (20 percent, 29 percent, 42 percent and 44 percent respectively) is significantly below the EU average of 76 percent. 
 
 It’s not such good news for the south, however. In Portugal, Spain, and Italy, almost everyone feels corruption is widespread, at 90 percent, 95 percent, and 97 percent respectively (even though the actual act of bribe-paying in these countries is less than 3 percent). The European Commission concludes that recent political scandals and the economic and financial crisis have contributed to their disillusionment. 
 
 That mirrors findings from Berlin-based Transparency International released last year, and show the eurocrisis undermining the public’s trust in institutions, especially within the countries most indebted. 
 
 "There is a deterioration in public trust in public institutions,” Anne Koch, regional director for Europe and Central Asia at Transparency International, told The Christian Science Monitor after the July release of the organization's poll. “There is a sense that Europe is slightly adrift politically.” 
 
 Today’s report might be most damaging for Romania and Bulgaria, which are part of the EU but only had their work restrictions lifted in several EU countries on January 1. 
 
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 The report showed that both countries, along with Croatia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Greece, experience significant levels of actual bribe-paying and high percentages of those who say corruption is widespread at home. 
 
 They are slated to become part of the passport-free Schengen zone. But nations such as France have argued that their commitment to rule-of-law is not up to par yet. Findings today will only add to those arguing that Romania and Bulgaria should remain out for now.
– Roughly 27% of people worldwide have paid a bribe to a government agency in the last 12 months, according to the latest Global Corruption Barometer report from Transparency International. The survey covered more than 114,000 people across 107 countries, the Wall Street Journal reports, and on the bright side, two-thirds said they refused to pay up when asked for bribes. "Bribe-paying levels remain very high worldwide," the group's chair said. "But people believe they have the power to stop corruption." Of course, the numbers are skewed by the most corrupt nations; Sierra Leone took the cake with 84% of people paying up, while upright Japan, Australia, and Denmark each had only 1%. The US came in at 7%, but all is hardly hunky dory here, with 76% saying they believed the political parties were affected by corruption.