Official Corruption and Its Effect on Development: Causes and Solutions

Official corruption is a phenomenon that can be seen in the most of the countries inall of the world. However, its kind, shape, rate and extent is different from country tocountry. Now, the official and financial reform has culminated to a global dilemmaand governments are aware that the corruption has caused many damages, so that itwould be very irregular. This dilemma can handicap the domestic economy anddisorder the development process and also threaten the democratic structures anddamage the law governance principle. It can be led to other threats on the nationalsecurity including the transnational crimes and terrorism. After the Islamic revolutionin Iran, the reform of official system as an undoubted principle and necessity has beendiscussed and emphasized. This matter led to the historical command of Iran’s Leaderon 30 April 2001 to combat against it. This article tries to clarify the role of officialcorruption in the societies and its effect on governments and development. Therefore,at first a lateral definition of corruption is presented especially official corruptionwhich that is the main obstacle for development process and as the source of othercorruptions. Then, its different levels, kinds and effective causes are mentioned andfinally the meaning of corruption in international documents is studied. Also theeffective causes and factors on official corruption is mentioned. Then in continues tomake a comparative study on corruption situation between Iran and other countries ofthe world and then its consequences and solutions are examined and presented.