Progress in the global struggle against official and business corruption is more apparent than real, with legislative commitments often not backed up by effective prosecution, according to the world’s leading anti-corruption campaign.

In its annual report released on Wednesday, Transparency International said that there had been a proliferation of anti-corruption legal conventions in recent years, which, it said: showed “both the transnational nature of large-scale corruption and the pressure for reform that countries can bring to bear on each other.”