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There was an article in one of our national newspapers this weekend that shows how deep the corruption goes. A huge investment company, with 4 billion in assets
by Confusion 17y ago
There was an article in one of our national newspapers this weekend that shows how deep the corruption goes. A huge investment company, with 4 billion in assets, was unwilling to pay up and was driven out of business. Several government officials committed fraud to the extent of 290 million dollars (seizing taxes the company paid to the Russian government) and despite sending different parts of the government piles of evidence, no one did a thing.
One thing was clear from that article that should be clear to everyone here: Russia is not a good place to do business these days. Your competitors are the government are the criminals.
- ilyak 17y agoWell, you know why they still do business here? The answer is M O N E Y. So, they bribe to make it happen, thus feeding the corruption loop, and don't see any problem with that! Until they do. Then, they brag the "ikea generation" crap in newspapers.
- Confusion 17y agoIf you need to pay bribes, you need to raise your prices to still make a profit. Your customers, i.e. you, need to pay more. Corruption hurts the population of a country, as every cent comes directly out of their pockets. That is partly why people in properly democratic countries have, and keep, a higher standard of living.
- ilyak 17y agoSure! Where did I say that corruption is a good thing? But I'm saying that they feed the corruption. By paying bribes.
- alexk 17y agoNone of your posts here contains a single fact, just rage. Moreover you are using lexicon (in russian) that unacceptable here. Stop trolling, please.
- radu_floricica 17y ago> Well, you know why they still do business here? The answer is M O N E Y I thought this was quite insightful. No matter how bad the conditions, there will be companies willing to make a profit there. After all, the choices are enter the market and make some money, or don't enter the market and make none. And Russia is a _big_ market, therefore a potential profit hard to dismiss. This all means the system there will not run out of fuel very soon. It is less productive though, but their natural resources will probably make up for it. The biggest loser is the population. I read recently in a study of happiness per country Russia is very near the bottom. But as long as there are enough money to move the wheels, the system will go on.
- radu_floricica 17y agoIt's much worse. The cost of bribes is bigger then the actual sum, and incomparable for the economy as a whole. A bribe-based economy has very high barriers of entry, especially when the main client in your industry is the state. Which means low competition which means... lots of bad things.
- stcredzero 17y agolow competition which means... lots of bad things. Example: Cell Phone service in the US. Actually, that's not the worst possible, but we are lagging the rest of the world.
- aarongough 17y agoLuckily you're still getting better service than us poor Canadians!
- praptak 17y agoWhat you described is unethical but quite a rational strategy in a corrupt political system. Pay up as long as the bribes are tolerable, use political leverage otherwise. Add a risk bonus (and bribe bonus) to your prices. That is exactly something to be expected from a corporation. You don't expect corporations to take the moral high ground and heal Russia's political system at the expense of their own profits? With respect to corruption there's bad news and good news. The bad news is that only Russian people can do something about it. The good news is that Russian people can do something about it.
- ilyak 17y agoIf it's just corporate-vs-political games, why are there on HN?
- asdflkj 17y ago"These days" as opposed to which days? Yeltsin days? If this is what you meant, then this is sneaky of you (perhaps unintentionally so), because you are offering political opinion, which is wrong, and which I may not refute on this site because of its political nature. Corruption is a fact of life in Russia--almost a natural law--and has always been. If you find this distasteful, then don't do business there. Ikea has known this from day one. Everyone who has ever dealt with Russia since the Iron Curtain was bound to find out on day one. This article is a move in a chess game, and both sides (in fact there is probably a handful of sides in this one) are on exactly the same ethical ground. Interesting if you're interested in minutiae of Russian politics, but otherwise business as usual.
- cellis 17y agoI don't think it was a retrospective statement. I think he meant "these days" as opposed to days in the future, where Russia is less corrupt than it always has been. Saying this is political opinion is a straw man argument.