Here’s another way to look at Russia’s 119th-place ranking in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index published today.
In Russia, budget spending under the category “national security and law enforcement” amounts to 1.3 trillion rubles.
An enormous sum. Monstrously enormous. And if you look at its share of total spending, it seems even bigger. In a sense, the whole country works to pay pensions to retirees and to maintain “law enforcement officers” of every kind (plus the army, though the army is listed separately).
The most important task of this “national security and law enforcement” apparatus is fighting corruption, because, as stated in all official documents, corruption is a threat to that very national security.
And for all that money, we end up in 119th place in the world—between Guyana and Sierra Leone.
If someone went to the trouble of creating a corruption ranking that took into account how much the state spends on fighting corruption, Russia would definitely come last by a wide margin.
More than anyone else in the world, we pay for something we never get.
P.S. More on the Corruption Perceptions Index published today here