Former British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone once said that corruption is a shortcut to a nation's demise. To check the veracity of this statement, let us take a look at northern and southern Europe.

The global social trend is to build welfare states in which governments share part of citizens' living cost that include healthcare, child-care and education. Welfare expenditure takes up almost the same proportion of the state budgets of northern European countries such as Germany, Finland and Sweden, as well as southern European nations like Greece, Italy and Spain. But the financial crisis is more serious in southern European countries because of the difference in the degree of transparency in governance and corruption.

For example, a corrupt government official causes much greater harm to a country than a corrupt accountant in a private company. And corrupt politicians, who take bribes and other favors to pass loose laws on social welfare management, are more dangerous than corrupt businessmen because they compromise the future of a country.