Russian Plane Bombers Exploited Corrupt System

Washington Post 09/18/04
author: Peter Baker
author: Susan B. Glasser
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

MOSCOW, Sept. 17 -- A thousand rubles, or about $34, was enough to bribe an airline agent to put a Chechen woman on board a flight just before takeoff, according to Russian investigators. The agent took the cash, and on a ticket the Chechen held for another flight simply scrawled, "Admit on board Flight 1047."

The woman was admitted onto the flight, while a companion boarded another plane leaving Moscow's Domodedovo Airport the same evening. Hours later, both planes exploded in midair almost simultaneously, killing all 90 people aboard.

A string of procedural breakdowns that let the two female suicide bombers board the planes last month brought home how deeply bribery, extortion and negligence are ingrained in Russia's security system. Many Russians consider their law enforcement authorities to be as crooked as the criminals they are supposed to catch.

Increasingly, the Chechen radicals who are targeting Russian civilians in a campaign to win independence for their southern province have learned to exploit that weakness to devastating effect. President Vladimir Putin's failure to curb corruption in the security system, according to analysts and law enforcement veterans, has left the country vulnerable to more attacks and handicapped in its fight against the bombers and hostage takers who often slip someone a few rubles so they can operate with impunity.

"This has become the normal way of doing business in Russia," said Pavel Chikov, a leader of a group called Public Verdict, which fights police abuses and corruption. "It's not seen as weird behavior when someone gives bribes or takes bribes. That's normal."

Georgi Satarov, head of the Indem public policy analysis institute and an aide to Boris Yeltsin when he was Russia's president, said his group's annual survey of corruption found that the police were "absolutely corrupt and consequently absolutely not effective."

Can you imagnine being the guy who took the bribe? The system must be very hard to deal with over there. How do people keep work in their areas? Bribes? Really how can business flurish with such corruption? If you don't know the rules, and everybody is not playing by the same rules, how can anybody play the game?