In these cases it is easy enough to point the finger of blame at the official or executive who elicits the bribe. The business person who is forced to pay up is the victim of a corrupt system.

On the other hand, you can argue that it's the bribe payer who is the guilty party for placing temptation in the way of the unfortunate recipient, who otherwise would have kept his hands clean.

Ultimately there is no simple answer. Even so, it's worth asking the question.

Last week anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International published its Bribe-Payers' Index for 2011. The survey attracted considerable attention for its findings that Russian corporations are the most likely to pay bribes, closely followed by companies from China.

No great surprise there, you might think. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the survey was where its results differed from Transparency International's own Corruption Perceptions' Index.

To be fair, the two indices are different beasts. The Bribe-Payers' Index is based on a consistent survey of business people from around the world, which asks how likely companies from 28 different countries are to pay bribes when doing business abroad.

The Corruption Perceptions' Index is more of a poll of polls, which melds the results of opinion surveys and analysts' assessments of the prevalence of corruption and the quality of governance across 178 countries.

But comparing the results is instructive. If we compare the ranking of the 28 countries in the Bribe-Payers' Index (BPI) with the relative rankings of the same countries from the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), we see some obvious discrepancies.

Some countries - Brazil, Italy, India - appear much more clean-handed in the Bribe-Payers' Index than they do in the Corruption Perceptions' Index.

Conversely Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates - and Hong Kong - all come out of the Bribe-Payers Index looking far more soiled than the Corruption Perceptions' Index implies (see chart).

This could mean two things. It could mean that companies from Hong Kong and Singapore are virtuous at home, where the business environment is clean, but are prepared to pay bribes when doing business in less salubrious jurisdictions abroad.

Or it could mean that some countries - Italy, Brazil - are less corrupt than their reputations imply, while others - Hong Kong and Singapore - may look clean on the surface but in reality are much filthier underneath.

So what's the right answer?

Unfortunately, it's impossible to say for sure. But if you are looking for a more realistic guide to the relative prevalence of corruption in different countries, I've a strong hunch that the Bribe-Payers' Index is the more accurate of the two.

That's because the Corruption Perceptions' Index has some obvious problems. For example it ranks the United Arab Emirates as less corrupt than Spain.

Now bribery may be widespread in Spain, but it is ubiquitous in the UAE, where bribes have always been an essential and expected part of day-to-day business. As a result, the Bribe-Payers Index, which ranks the UAE 12 places below Spain (out of 28) appears to give the fairer picture.

Similarly, while Singapore bangs loudly on the anti-corruption drum and comes out as the cleanest country of all in the Corruption Perceptions' Index, in reality corruption in the city state is more common than its reputation for cleanliness implies.

The same goes for Hong Kong. The city gets good publicity for straight-dealing, but behind the scenes dodgy deals are rife.

Unfortunately, Hong Kong's lowly 15th place in the Bribe-Payers index looks far more justified than its lofty 6th place - above Germany - in the Corruption Perceptions' Index.