Corruption may have been a cause of the night club fire last week in the Russian city of Perm that killed 113 people. Alexander Fridman, an entertainment producer there, told the Christian Science Monitor, “Fire inspectors found violations of the regulations a year ago, yet they didn’t come back to check whether corrections were made. Why was that? There were hundreds of people gathering at that club every night, yet they never closed it down. The basic lesson is that fire inspectors should not take bribes.”
Russia’s red tape is terrible. The country ranked 182 out of 183 on the World Bank’s 2010 Doing Business Index in the category of “Dealing with Construction Permits.” It takes an average of 704 days to obtain the permits needed to build a warehouse in Russia; the OECD average is 157 days. Such extreme bureaucratic delays mean petty corruption is the only way to keep things moving.
The Christian Science Monitor said, “Amid Russia’s decaying infrastructure and often jury-rigged new construction, the potential for accidents [such as the nightclub fire] abound because laws are not enforced, experts say.” A professor at Moscow’s Institute of Architecture said most public buildings are hazards. “As long as we have this practice of paying bribes rather than making the needed improvements,” he said, “nothing will change.”
The story said 18,000 Russians die each year in fires, several times the rate in most developed countries. The U.S., with twice Russia’s population, had 3,500 fire fatalities in 2008.
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More on the indictment of Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriguez (reported here). The two Florida residents were identified by the DOJ as the president and a former vice president respectively of “Company X.” The company is Terra Telecommunications Corp., formed in Nevada on July 1, 1996 and domesticated in Florida in 2002. A copy of its Florida business registration can be downloaded here. Thanks to the U.S. readers who provided this information.
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Women in Kabul marched against corruption. As reported by the LA Times and others, hundreds of women on Wednesday held a peaceful but noisy street protest. They want President Karzai to remove from his government anyone connected to corruption and the drug trade. “These women are being very brave,” said the protest leader, her face hidden by a burka. “To be a woman in Afghanistan and an activist can mean death. We want justice for our loved ones!” The protest group called itself the Social Association of Afghan Justice Seekers. A spokesperson said “our people have gone into a nightmare of unbelieving” because of the disputed election and the fact that “the culture of impunity” still exists despite Karzai’s vow to eliminate it.
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