University of Illinois at Chicago seal
University of Illinois at Chicago released a report entitled “Chicago and Illinois,
Leading the Pack in Corruption Anti-Corruption Report Number 5” dated 15 February 2012. The report adds that there were 1,828 public corruption convictions the state of Illinois between 1976 and 2010.
Rod Blagojevich, 55, a former governor of Illinois, began his 14-year prison sentence on Thursday 15
University of Illinois at Chicago
March 2012. He was convicted in December last year on 18 counts including bribery, wire fraud and trying to sell President Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat. He is the fourth governor of Illinois out of the last seven to be convicted.
Although he was sentenced in December, he was given more than three months to say goodbye to his wife, Patti, and their two daughters. Blagojevich’s top fundraiser, Antoin Rezko, a former Chicago real estate developer, was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in jail for corruption in 2008.
The report puts the state’s corruption costs at more than $500m a year. Two other states had even higher numbers of appointees, government employees and a few private individuals convicted of public corruption – New York, with 2,522 convictions and California with 2,345 convictions. Of the largest states Illinois had the highest per person conviction rate, at 1.4 per 10,000 population.
Read the University of Illinois report here.
