There's certainly nothing wrong in principal with the interested parties "sorting it out amongst themselves" - it happens with minor accidents every day in prob

There's certainly nothing wrong in principal with the interested parties "sorting it out amongst themselves" - it happens with minor accidents every day in probably every country in the world. I'm even pretty much OK with paying off the media to remove the reports or not report it in the first place. They're only interested because of who he is, and it's not related to his job, so I don't see a big problem here. As you suggest, the problem is when the authorities are also susceptible to being paid off. As the innocent party, my choice should be "accept your offer to settle, or contact the police and my insurer." When the choice is "accept your offer to settle, or get nothing because the police are already paid off", then I don't have any negotiating power. We have no idea whether the settlement was remotely adequate for the damage that was done, or whether the victims felt like they had to take a token payment because the alternative was nothing at all.