bribes

Sure, but the people taking the bribes are part of the organization that's supposed to punish people for taking bribes (i.e.

Doing creative accounting to hide the bribes is also illegal.

So when an official is deciding how to use other people's money, he will be trying to gain personally from his position, and that's where bribes come in.

Not to mention that some places expect bribes if your stuff isn't going to get stuck for days.

This basically boils down to how can a dangerous entity in captivity use bribes to attain freedom?

The credit came through to sign the contracts, and the bribes were rolled into the contracts.

If you can't get anything done, or you can't resist taking bribes, you should just decide it isn't for you.

What's the point of being a city official if you're not in a position to get bribes one way or another?

For one thing, as far as bribes have been payed, I'd like to see this guy being charged to the full extent.

Hundreds of millions in bribes on some single deals.

So bribes will not work against a smart gatekeeper.

> So complicit are your governments that in several European countries bribes still are tax-deductible.

But there's this thing called "psychopaths", and they do seek out bribing opportunities and they don't have any problem whatsoever with paying bribes too.

"investments" (meaning, money for more lobbying and bribes).

“How could you possibly do something like that?” >In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials.

- Avoiding the whole "corrupted officials with lots of $ in bribes" anecdote (despite it being somewhat true from the crazy stories that I've heard from friends in China), it is much easier to spend the money here without worry of alerting the Chinese government.

Bribes and/or threats-- there's more than one possible motivator here.