The article only dealt with "number of convictions of public officials" in ratio to the state's total population. It did not go into: 1) the dollar value of the corruption; 2) the effect on the public in the way of reduction in safety or degradation of services; or 3) the number of private persons/companies entwined in the corruption and related convictions of them.

In short, you can make a stand-alone statistic for anything, and it often doesn't say more than it says.