News: Corruption in Russia, not really news

With the World Bank reform talks centering around the issues of corruption, this piece in the LA times about bribing traffic cops is relevant. If passengers are having these issues, it can only be imagined the problems commercial truckers and other road-based commercial transactions are having.

Article is by by Megan K. Stack and was originally published in August of this year.

"Before we start to look for trash in the eye of the traffic policeman, we should look into our own eyes," he says. "When I am asked, 'When will the corruption stop?' I always say that it will only stop when we stop paying bribes."

And, of course, he's right. But here's what I say, nevertheless: Pay the bribe! Because once I fumbled naively onto the path of the righteous and, my friends, it is a trail of sorrows.

If you pay the bribe, it may cost you $40, $60, maybe $100, plus 15 minutes and a few curses muttered under the breath.

If you don't pay the bribe, you have to go to traffic court. And it takes months to get a court date, and meanwhile you don't have a license, even if it's your American license.

And if you need to, for example, get that license back because you are leaving for a vacation in the United States and you want to drive while you're there, then you may (let's pretend this is hypothetical) have to hunt down the man in the bowels of the traffic bureaucracy who is powerful enough to get that license back. And that bribe will be plenty steep; lots more than you'd have paid on the side of the road. Hypothetically.

You travel to some sad sagging building where stray dogs howl at the doors and pay what you have to pay. At least that's over, you think."

Full Article is here