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Monday, July 25, 2005
Russian mail order bribes
I fancy that I know something about Russia because 10 years ago I could buy a bottle of vodka from a street vendor without being ripped off or robbed. The truth, of course, is that my ignorance of Russia is only slightly less appalling than my ignorance of the rest of the world.
I do know this, however. Russian bureaucrats are still selling themselves cheap:
More than $300bn (£171bn) will be paid in bribes in Russia this year, almost 10 times as much as in 2001, according to a survey.
The average bribe paid to corrupt bureaucrats is 13 times what it was four years ago, according to research by the Indem thinktank. While the number of bribes paid had decreased since 2001, the average sum paid was now £77,000, up from £5,800 four years ago, it said. The change was put down to an increasingly influential bureaucracy targeting rich citizens.
...Lilya Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, said corruption was increasing. "It's not that people are getting more greedy, but that the system is getting less transparent. People need to make more effort to force decisions to be made."
Here in America, our system is better, because it's much more transparent. You run for Congress and take millions in campaign contributions from favored industries. You pass a few tax breaks for your favorite clients, who pay to get you re-elected. When you're sick of doing the people's work, you smoothly transition into a high-paying job as a lobbyist for the industry that's been sponsoring your campaigns. And all this is 100% legal in the United States, so it's not bribery -- it's leveraging expertise.
