Apparently there's a price scale for everything in Russia, including bribes:
The chairman of the Russian Anti-Corruption Committee, Anton Belyakov, stated that bribes may vary in Russia from $100 (to a police officer) to $20 million (to acquire the official position of a governor).
And it's going up, too:
The average amount of bribes on the business market of Russia has increased to $135,8 thousand. A successful Russian businessman has to pay about $243,7 thousand of bribes a year as opposed to $23,000 in 2001. The Russian market of bribes is evaluated at some $316 billion a year.
This was enough to vault Russia to 34th place on the Most Corrupt Countries list, slotting in right with Albania, Niger, and Sierra Leone.
It's an impressive jump, but they're going to have to do better than that if they expect to make a BCS (Bribery Championship Series) bowl, because even though the Former Soviet Republics Conference champion gets an automatic bid, Russia still has to jump over Kyrgygzstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and undefeated Turkmenistan. It's doable, because everybody except the Azeris are still ahead on the schedule, but they'll need somebody to beat them and somebody to beat Turkmenistan twice.
Of course, with the proper bribes, everything can come out just the way you want it.
Ooh. BREATHE, my pasty friend!
Nice one. :)
Damn it, I'm still a thousand Skee-Ball tickets away from owning my own Russian bureaucrat.