Posted on 04/01/2010 8:43:48 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
THE jet-fighter for a fiver was a scam too far even for Russia. An official has resigned after a state agency sold four MiG 31 warplanes to a fictitious company for $US5 each, then bought them back for $US100,000. Corruption is so casual and endemic in Russia that the tricksters clearly felt little need to hide their actions behind an elaborate front. But the exposure of the case also illustrates a renewed drive by President Dmitry Medvedev to change a culture of graft that is threatening Russia's future.
Motorists run a daily gauntlet of traffic police extorting bribes, parents and patients grease the palms of teachers and doctors for favourable treatment and entrepreneurs try to establish new businesses in the face of bureaucrats demanding kickbacks.
Police threaten to raid businesses unless their owners pay them off, while unscrupulous firms hire officers to storm competitors' premises to put them out of business.
Transparency International rated Russia 146th out of 180 countries on its latest corruption index, estimating that bribery costs $US300 billion ($332bn) a year.
Corruption costs lives too; the fire that killed 155 people at a nightclub in Perm in December was blamed on lax safety inspections. Public outrage at that incident and a series of police scandals galvanised Mr Medvedev to intensify his war on corruption.
With modernisation of Russia's economy the central theme of his presidency, Mr Medvedev demanded an "immediate and crushing response" against greedy officials.
The Duma, Russia's parliament, has passed a law to ban pretrial detention of people accused of economic crimes, a favourite tactic of corrupt police and officials to extort bribes.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.com.au ...
Under commie-lite, bribery has really come into its own. You thought it was bad under communism itself, it’s way more lucrative now.
We’re heading there in the other direction.
What, praytell, is a “rort?”
noun Australia, informal: a fraudulent or dishonest act or practice
Thanks!
Pikers. Bribery of the Rats has cost us about $5 TRILLION in the past 14 months alone.
Russia, land of opportunity. Sure glad my grandparents walked from the Volga to Hamburg and took a ship to Ellis Island.
Too bad to read this - under Communism, corruption was bad, but “ethical”. We used to send items to relatives living in a SSR. We quickly learned that if you sent something, it would get “lost”. However, if you sent TWO identical items, one of them would always get delivered! It would have been just as easy for the customs inspectors to steal both...
They were probably too lazy to steal two things in one day. My dad was a mail carrier, so I won’t make any comparisons to the US Postal service.
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