Vladislav Inozemtsev Quotes
What Westerners would call corruption is not a scourge of the system but the basic principle of its normal functioning. Corruption in Russia is a form of transactional grease in the absence of any generally accepted and legally codified alternative.
Vladislav Inozemtsev, Russian Economist, Essay, Spring 2011, Quoted in The Atlantic, October 2011
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Abramoff had bribed over 100 Congressional offices by a combination of campaign donations, paid golf junkets all over the world, free elegant meals at his own fancy Washington Restaurant, free tickets for the Congressmen, their staffs and their major constituents, to Concerts and sporting events including his own Skyboxes, and promises of future employment at very high salaries. Ironically, we was convicted of cheating some of his lobbying clients and did a jail term, but his “bribery” was technically usually legal. In addition to Abramoff, only one Congressman was charged and convicted of corruption, when many if not most had engaged in these corrupt practices. Congress makes the rules with loopholes so that what is bribery and corruption in any other setting is often not against the law if Congress is involved.
What was remarkable was that all the Defense Department and military witnesses agreed with Lynch on this point.
1st Earl of Kingston. Historically, this quotation shows that in the middle of the 19th century bribery was commonplace and material when there were critical issues under defeat by the legislature. It was so blatant that the Prime Minister in his report to the Queen pointed it out just like other political factors.
Most people at the time thought that political corruption was limited to politicians being bribed with money to do or not to do things. It dawned on Stephens that beyond the payment of money per se—that it could involve financial arrangements like shares in companies or tips for investment, business arrangements for family companies then or in the future or even social favors. He was the first political observer to not the variety of forms of political corruption.
Vladislav Inozemtsev is a Russian academician who is the director of the Moscow-based Centre for Research on Post-Industrial Societies, a nonprofit think-tank. He is a professor and the chair at the Department of World Economy, Faculty of Public Governance, Moscow State Lomonosov University.
