Released on the 17th of November 2009, these corruption statistics for the South American continent are taken from Transparency International's 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). All of the continents countries - which are included in the total of 180 countries which Transparency International evaluates - are listed below. The 2009 CPI rating is based on 13 different independent surveys, however not all surveys are used for all listed countries. The ratings are derived from a perceived measure of domestic public sector and governmental corruption, within each nation, and each country/territory has been graded on a scale from 1.0 (most corruption) to 10.0 (least corruption). World corruption rankings are also included for each country listed below.