The price of a Russian bribe
An average Russian bribe in 2009 cost about 23.000 RUB, which is up more than 100 percent from 2008, figures from the Ministry of Economy show.
According to the Ministry, an average bribe in 2008 cost 9000 RUB, the Moscow Times reports. The ministry in 2009 registered 7,856 cases of bribery involving state agencies, an increase of 10,2 percent from the year before. Of those cases, a total of 2,351 people were prosecuted for corruption last year, a rise of 14.9 percent, the newspaper reports. Meanwhile, corruption watchdog Transparency International believes the level of corruption in 2009 was even higher than the figures from the ministry. The Interior Ministry statistics involve mostly low-profile crimes, and they aren’t very helpful in understanding the total amount of corruption in the country, said Yelena Panfilova, head of Transparency International Russia. Figures from the first months of 2010 indicate a decline in the corruption level.
