Afghanistan remains one of the most corrupt states on earth, third only to Somalia and Burma according to Transparency International, an advocacy group that tracks government corruption. In 2009, Afghan citizens had to pay an estimated $2.5 billion U.S. dollars in bribes, which is equivalent to 23 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The amount of money stolen from the coffers of the Afghan government exceeds $1 billion U.S. dollars a year, and billions more are taken from foreign aid and NATO contacts. According to a senior NATO official who works on corruption issues in Afghanistan, corruption “has progressively gotten worse. It is at all levels of government.”