Russians spend $36 billion on bribes

Terrorists find a stable economic base in Russia

The issue of corruption in Russia has been raised again on account of recent terrorist acts. It turned out during the investigation that a suicide terrorist needed to pay only 1,000 rubles (about $30) to board a plane.

Bribes make one of the basic articles of expenditure in Russia. Russian people spend about $36 billion a year on bribes, the Vienna-based Presse newspaper wrote. As it turned out, terrorists use a part of this money in their own purposes.

According to DW-World, Russian media outlets believe that corruption plays the key role in terrorist acts in the country. Weapons, ammunition and militants can be supplied to any town or city for a bribe. A bribe would be enough to let a suicide terrorist buy an airplane ticket. The Russian Prosecutor General, Vladimir Ustinov, said on September 16th that the situation was becoming rather dangerous. Ustinov said that terrorists, like those, who killed many children and adults in Beslan, usually hire cheap labor force: poor children, for example, who would be happy to earn a little money. Therefore, the prosecutor said, terrorists had a stable economic base in Russia.

German experts think that the easiest corruption scheme is especially efficient in Russia due to no transparency and democratic control over the executive authorities. There is no control in key industrial branches – from raw materials and fuel to arms, drugs and information services.

DW-World said that Putin's course of centralization will only exacerbate the situation on the whole. The maximum centralization of most important economic branches in the hands of an authoritarian state implies the abatement of a circle of persons, who control the cash flow. The power vertical will become just a screen in this case, to cover the invisible vertical of the total corruption. The anti-monopoly law in democratic states keeps its effectiveness owing to the efficient division of authorities.

The Kremlin strives for strengthening the gas giant Gazprom as the oil and gas monopoly, which causes concern on world markets, the daily Die Welt wrote. A similar situation can be observed in Saudi Arabia, where the executive power and control over exporters is concentrated in one hands. Such a combination of politics and economy has not relieved the country of either corruption, or terrorists.