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https://freedium-mirror.cfd/https://medium.com/@elvirabary/the-corruption-trap-why-putin-needs-bribes-to-rule-russia-997a22988371>
"Officials are arrested. Criminal cases make the news. Putin regularly demands
that state money be protected from theft. Every few years, another
anti-corruption campaign begins.
And yet corruption remains everywhere.
The reason is not that the Kremlin has been trying to defeat it and somehow
failing.
At the highest levels of the Russian system, there is very little intention to
eliminate corruption at all.
For many people, access to government power is valuable precisely because it
creates opportunities to make money. A state position gives you influence over
contracts, permits, budgets, companies, land, investigations. Everyone inside
the system understands this.
And within the elite, becoming rich through your position is not treated as
something shameful or extraordinary. What matters much more is whose interests
you serve, whom you share with, and whether you remain loyal to the people
above you.
But corruption in Russia is also much more complicated than somebody taking a
bribe. Over time, entire chains of relationships have grown around it. Remove
one piece, and you may disrupt everything connected to it. Without these
informal relationships, people would no longer know how to get anything done.
Today, we're going to look inside this machine: how Russian corruption actually
works, how the different parts depend on one another, and why a government that
constantly promises to fight corruption has built a system that cannot easily
function without it.
Here's our roadmap for today.
Three Main Words — three Russian words that explain how corrupt deals
actually work.
The Price of Access — Why doing business in Russia requires a political
patron.
Built for Theft — Why the Kremlin loves mega-projects.
When the Official Is the Customer — How state funding rewards pleasing the
patron instead of the audience
Why the System Needs Putin — How corruption replaces institutions and makes
the elite dependent on the ruler who protects and balances their networks."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
