Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich Tuesday after a wiretap allegedly recorded him scheming to make money on his appointment to fill the U. S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama. Blagojevich ran for election in part on cleaning up after his predecessor, George Ryan, who was convicted in 2006 of racketeering, bribery and extortion. “If it isn‘t the most corrupt state in the United States it‘s certainly one hell of a competitor,” Robert Grant, head of the FBI‘s Chicago office, said Tuesday.
On a per-capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007, according to an analysis of Department of Justice statistics. Louisiana, Alaska and North Dakota all fared worse than the Land of Lincoln in that analysis. The analysis does not include corruption cases handled by state law enforcement and it considers only convictions. Corruption may run more rampant in some states but go undetected.
