Even then that salary is nothing to sneeze at for a head of state. I believe Angela Merkel makes ~300k EUR in salary.
Road costs $1.2 Billion? $200 MILLION to me, make the road a little narrower and pour x cm less asphalt. Buying and selling electricity? 20% to the leader. They are shameless and they know how to keep power, they let those downstream wet their beak too.
But ultimately they know that they have to have clean cash. I make $600K and spend just $50k a year so $550K is invested year after year. No matter what, I can keep the $xx that derived from that. The stolen money is in secret accounts, companies, in other people's names etc. Not always easy to get a hold or keep the state away.
It's not that the 1st world is less corrupt, it's just that some schemes are more evolved.
Try to find a normal priced taxi as a white person in Haiti: 5 minute drive = $100. Or "You give me $150, I give you a receipt over $300." This scam was brought to you by... drumroll the UN! (It's a nice way to make one or two additional salaries while on an "educational visit").
Opportunity makes thieves, as the Germans say. You’re using an organisation with close to zero effective oversight, that is without exaggeration a law to itself, and which for political reasons has many staff from really corrupt countries as an example of corruption. The UN is not clean and no one who knows anything about it thinks it’s clean.
For similar reasons aid organisations are also not paragons of probity. They work in poor, corrupt countries and they have access to both budgets and people who are willing and eager to get some of that money by helping them defraud their employers.
What does this prove about corruption in more developed countries? Either very little or that systems are important.
In Sweden your political career can end for putting hundreds of dollars of private expenses on a ministerial card.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-11-11-951111...
In Ireland you can die rich through corruption after having been prime minister, never having been charged with anything.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/20/ireland
And petty corruption in either country is much less than anything aid workers deal with regularly, basically absent. Living in China has made me far more cynical and accepting of the fact that corruption happens all the time but I know perfectly well that petty corruption is very limited in Ireland, my home country.
Interference in civil service exams or school leaving exams is unremarkable in China and would bring down a government in Ireland.
The difference in corruption between developed, developing and undeveloped countries is so large that it’s not just a difference in quantity but in kind.
Uhm, yes. The more money at stake, the higher the "quantity"; I don't argue that because it is obvious and irrelevant. The ~"difference in kind" is what I was pointing out.
(US should also build dorms for US Congress /Senate people and charge them for maintenance, say $300 a month. Pretty sure people /foundations would donate so the building would be built for free and the govt has land)
Presidential salary is about USD 3.5mm/yr. PM is similar, and other ministers are about half that, and there's variable performance-based pay as part of it.