Notes on Russia 01: Police Bribes

I made two business trips to Russia for a total of approximately three weeks.  These notes are reflections on some of the events I experienced.

We were in a car on the way to work.  We were joking around as usual as good company team members should.  As we approached an intersection, a policeman with a baton quickly signaled the driver to pull aside to the left – he signaled this with his baton.  The driver pulls over.  He opens the door and gets out of the car.

(In Russia, you get out of the car and approach the police, in contrast to within the United States, where one must remain in the vehicle and wait for the policeman to approach the vehicle.)

We noticed that it was taking a long time to figure out what was going on.  One colleague of mine mentioned that something must be very wrong because the driver appeared to be arguing with the policeman.  More time passed, and eventually, the driver got out of the police car quickly, came into our car and told us he had to pay the policeman 10, 000 rubles (~ $320) for a bribe to get out of being accused of a Russian DUI.  He mentioned that the original request for a bribe was 30, 000 rubles (~ $960), but he bargained down the price of the bribe.  He either had to pay a bribe or get his driver license revoked for two or three years.  There is no fine for a DUI, we were told.  He ran to get the money from a nearby ATM.  The ATM was not working, but we found another way to help him out, it turned out.

We are told that in Russia, everyone knows that when the policeman stop a driver and accuses him of a DUI, the sum of the bribe amount is generally known.  However, in the above case, the original bribe was high (30, 000 rubles) because we figure that the policeman may have assumed that since the vehicle we were riding in looked in much better shape than the typical vehicle on the road in that area, we had more money.  The usual bribe for a DUI is around 10,000 rubles, we are told.

Supposedly, this type of behavior is common in Russia.  It happens all over the country.  Many young people in Russia appear to despair at the state of things with regard to the government, such as this type of behavior.