Countries with the least press freedom rank among the most corrupt on the planet, a new study has found.

Transparency International on Wednesday published its annual league table of graft - with Somalia topping the list ahead of South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan and New Zealand emerging as the cleanest nation, just ahead of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Switzerland.

However, campaigners discovered a strong correlation between those nations with weak protections for journalists and civic society groups and those high on its Corruption Perception Index (CPI).

Transparency found that almost all journalists killed since 2012 were killed in corrupt countries. A journalist dies in one of the more corrupt countries every week.

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Delia Ferreira Rubio, chairwoman of Transparency International, said: “CPI results correlate not only with the attacks on press freedom and the reduction of space for civil society organizations.

"High levels of corruption also correlate with weak rule of law, lack of access to information, governmental control over social media and reduced citizens' participation.

"In fact, what is at stake is the very essence of democracy and freedom."

The Corruption Perception ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector

corruption, according to experts and businesspeople. It uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

This year, the index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43.

Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transparency International, said: “No activist or reporter should have to fear for their lives when speaking out against corruption.

"Given current crackdowns on both civil society and the media worldwide, we need to do more to protect those

who speak up."

The analysis, which incorporates data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, shows that in the last six years, more than 9 out of 10 journalists were killed in countries that score 45 or less

on the Corruption Perceptions Index. This means that, on average, every week at least one journalist is killed in a country that is highly corrupt.

In Brazil, which scored 37 on this year’s index, 20 journalists died in the last six years. Targeted for their investigations into local-government corruption and drug-related crime,

among other issues, reporters in Brazil risk their lives everyday by simply doing their jobs.

Transparency also compared their data with the World Justice Project, shows that most countries that score low for civil liberties also tend to score high for corruption.

Mr Moriera said: “Smear campaigns, harassment, lawsuits and bureaucratic red tape are all tools used by certain governments in an effort to quiet those who drive anti-corruption efforts. We’recalling on those governments that hide behind restrictive laws to roll them back immediately and allow for greater civic participation."

"Hungary, which saw a ten-point decrease in the index over the last six years, moving from 55 in 2012 to 45 in 2017, is one of the most alarming examples of shrinking civil society space in Eastern Europe. If enacted, recent draft legislation in Hungary threatens to restrict NGOs and revoke their charitable status. This would have disastrous implications for many civil society groups already experiencing the constraining effects of a previous law that stigmatises NGOs."

Over the last six years, several countries significantly improved their CPI score, including Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and the United Kingdom, while several countries declined, including Syria, Yemen and Australia. The best, Transparency said, performing region is Western Europe with an average score of 66. The worst performing regions are Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Duncan Hames, Director of Policy at Transparency International UK, said: “It’s encouraging to see perceptions of corruption in the UK’s public sector falling, but in other sectors more work needs to be done to prevent money laundering and stop professionals here enabling corruption from around the world.

"The UK Government has talked about leading the global fightback against corruption. This requires sustained and long-term commitment.

“The Government has conceded it will not meet its promise to introduce legislation by this April to bring about transparency over the real owners of overseas companies owning UK property.

"Stalled progress such as this must not continue to be the consequence of the Government’s preoccupation with Brexit. Instead, a leader in the fight against corruption would use Britain’s emerging independence in world trade to ensure strong anti-corruption standards in trade deals made with those countries performing much less well in this Corruption Perceptions Index.”