Laundering bribes through family members is an ancient tradition. That’s why Xi Jinping got his hackles up when Bloomberg exposed the hundreds of millions dollars his relatives were worth *before* he became capo di tutti i capi in China.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-not-to-get-kicked-out-of-china
It would not surprise me if Xi were worth tens of billions today. Not because he’s necessarily particularly greedy, but all hierarchies need to reward people at every level to temper their ambitions. In absolutist tyrannies, this is even more important, as disgruntled subordinates can have you killed, as happened to Oda Nobunaga when he slighted Akechi Mitsuhide.
Yep.
It's pretty much the rule in Washington. It's what allows Joe to stand up and say his net worth was only $30,000 when he took office as Vice-President. Of course he leaves out the part where his drug addict son who's never held a real job is worth millions, and his two brothers have been handed millions in sweetheart deals all through Biden's political career by trading on the Biden name.
The kickbacks never get handled by the boss, they always come to the bagman. Any mafioso can tell you that.