The Spark That Starts a Fire

The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau replaced the police's own Anti-Corruption Branch in 1952, after that branch failed to make headway against three of its own detectives implicated in an opium heist, and has operated under the Prevention of Corruption Act since 1960. It sits inside the Prime Minister's Office and its Director reports to the Prime Minister — an arrangement that invites the obvious objection, and the Constitution answers it: under Article 22G, a Director refused consent by the Prime Minister may proceed anyway if the President, acting in his own discretion, concurs. The Act reaches both the public and the private sector with no exemption for rank or office, covers favours as well as cash, and follows Singapore citizens abroad. In practice the private sector dominates the caseload; CPIB names construction, manufacturing, and transport and storage as its most vulnerable industries.

• Art. 22Gthe President may let an investigation proceed the PM has refused
• S$100kmaximum fine per count — or 5 years' jail, 7 on government contracts
• Constructionone of three sectors CPIB names as most vulnerable

Every complaint goes to the Complaints Evaluation Committee, set up in 1989, which decides within 14 days whether it falls inside CPIB's purview and carries enough to act on — identities, amounts, date, time, place, mode of transaction, and the favour given in return. The test is not certainty but pursuability. A report that is not registered has not thereby been found false: it may be referred to another agency, or sent to a public officer's own department for disciplinary action. Traffic runs the other way too — CPIB says its own intelligence work has lifted thin reports into live cases.

• 14 daysto decide whether a complaint is pursuable
• 1989the Complaints Evaluation Committee is set up

Read along the rows and the shape is not a straight line. The anonymous share of reports rose from 43% in 2022 to 46% in 2023, then stepped down to 34–35% in 2024–2025. What moves in one direction every year is the rate at which an anonymous tip becomes a case: 13% in 2022, 20% in 2023, 28% in 2024, 29% in 2025. Reports overall convert at a rising rate too, 36% to 43% — anonymous tips still convert less often than named ones in every year measured, but the gap has narrowed from 23 points to 14. This is an inference from the series, not a claim CPIB makes, and the data cannot separate better self-selection by informants from CPIB's own improved handling of thin leads.

• 13% → 29%anonymous-tip-to-case conversion rate, 2022 to 2025
• 23pt → 14ptgap between the anonymous and overall conversion rates, narrowing

Singapore scored 84 of 100 on Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking third of 182 countries and territories — unchanged from 2024. The index measures perceived levels of public-sector corruption, not corruption itself, drawn from 13 external sources that reflect the views of experts and businesspeople; Transparency International's own release adds a caveat worth carrying alongside the score: Singapore and Switzerland are “among the top scorers, but have faced scrutiny for facilitating the movement of dirty money” — a high score is not a claim that a country enables no corruption anywhere in the world, only that its own public sector is perceived as clean.

• 3rd / 182Singapore's rank on the 2025 TI Corruption Perceptions Index, score 84
• perceptionswhat the index measures — not a count of corruption itself