Corruption in Bangladesh

Corruption in Bangladesh has been a continuing problem. Like many other developing and emerging countries, corruption is a part of life in Bangladesh. Regular citizens routinely pay bribes for basic services and to skip queues, and officials rely on bribes to make a living.

As of 2001, corruption in the public sector was "endemic, chronic and all pervasive".

The Anti Corruption Commission was formed in 2004, but is considered to be largely ineffective in investigating and preventing corruption because of governmental control over it. The Anti Corruption Commission chairman Iqbal Mahmood admitted in November 2020 that "there are high levels of bribery and corruption in government services" in Bangladesh.

In Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 182 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), Bangladesh scored 24. Bangladesh was ranked among the 13 most corrupt countries globally in the index. For comparison with regional scores, the best score among those countries of the Asia Pacific region that appeared in the Index was 84, the average score was 45 and the worst score was 15. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 89 (ranked 1), the average score was 42, and the worst score was 9 (ranked 181, in a two-way tie).

Commenting on Bangladesh's score on the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index in the wake of the August 2024 fall of the authoritarian Sheikh Hasina premiership, Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman of Transparency International Bangladesh said in early 2026, "Over the past one and a half years, the interim government has failed to take effective and exemplary action against corruption. At the same time, proposed reforms by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and other institutions have largely been ignored or left unimplemented, weakening their ability to act independently." In south Asia, only Afghanistan ranks lower than Bangladesh, he said.