Russians have accepted 1.8 billion rubles ($27 million) in bribes that the authorities have cracked down on in the first nine months of this year, federal prosecutors have said.
Anti-corruption activists say official figures vastly underestimate the prevalence of bribery in a country that ranks low in transparency and high in corruption.
“The total amount [of money taken as bribes] totaled 1.8 billion rubles” between January and September, Alexander Kurennoy, a spokesman for the General Prosecutor’s Office, said Tuesday.
He noted that bribe-giving and taking rose by 3 percent to 10,179 cases this year.
Prosecutions for facilitating bribery grew by 16 percent, Kurennoy added.
Moscow and the regions of Rostov, Moscow and Chelyabinsk led in a rating of bribe-taking between January and October, according to the prosecutor’s office’s data.
Bribe-giving cases were most prevalent in the Moscow region, Moscow, and the Krasnodar region.
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