The manipulation of official statistics is grand corruption and political corruption. There is a mechanism that gives rise to phenomena of corruption in official statistics and has component parts: the drivers, the enabling conditions, the modalities and methods used to arrive at the phenomena, and the vectors or agents that execute or propagate the phenomena. The main focus of this article is the drivers, that is, the interests and incentives of those directly or indirectly involved in phenomena of corruption in official statistics, and without which these phenomena would not arise. To attenuate drivers (which will always be present) we propose to foster a culture of statistical ethics through specific steps of education and socialization, as well as laws and institutional setups supportive of statistical ethics.