A Chicago newspaper that bought a bar (2017)

Every interaction with a government official of any sort came with the expectation of some sort of bribe being paid. We're not just talking about paying inspectors off to ignore violations, we're talking routine matters. For example, a passport application requires a police verification where the local police visit you to verify your home address and other details. You can get that without paying a bribe but it might take months. Or you can pay a few hundred rupees to "expedite" it. Get pulled over by the cops or caught on the train without a ticket? You can pay the official fine or pay a fraction of that as a bribe. There's a whole coded language around this. They ask if you "want a receipt". Want to get admitted to a good college? You need to make a "donation".

The corruption goes up the chain. Civil servants want to be posted in positions with more bribes to be had. Of course the people making those decisions expect a substantial payoff for the most lucrative postings. Officials who've paid that don't want to disrupt the system they've paid into. You can't prosecute someone because you probably won't find an honest official. Every so often someone does manage to gain some notoriety trying to clean things up only to get torn down by people with a vested interest in things staying the way they are.

To me, that's the scariest part of the brazen corruption at the supreme court, and members of congress who won't do a thing about it because they happen to play for the right team. I don't think we're far from the tipping point where the system can no longer root out corrupt officials the way the city did after this report exposed it.

I've only ever had one experience that toed the line of a situation where an inspection approval hinged on something totally unrelated to the results of an inspection. It was the final inspection to receive our CO for our office space. Every inspection up until then was done by inspectors that were courteous and professional, and was beyond my expectations of how the process could have gone. The final inspection was done by none other than the Fire Marshall himself. Not someone from the office of. At the end of the inspection, he said every thing looks good and sees no issues, except.... Our office space was in a large building with other commercial offices as well as residential space on the upper floors. Apparently, the city and the building owner had been going back and forth with updates to required exit signs and other items that are necessary for commercial but not for residential spaces. The city had decided the owner was not holding up his end of the deals, and the Fire Marshall decided to hold our CO hostage over these other deals that had nothing to do with us. We had to call in a few favors to get this resolved, and had we not had a particular contact available to us, there's no telling how long we'd have needed to wait vs the less than 48 hours it did take

In many places, you either pass the inspection by actually meeting the requirements, or offer a bribe and get closeish to meeting the requirements.

Assuming you're a good citizen who only calls the inspectors over when you're pretty sure you have done everything necessary to pass, then you will never get the opportunity to pay a bribe.

That said, I also do business outside of the U.S. and it is dramatically different trying to figure out how to get anything done in some countries and how much extralegal activity is necessary.

Digital copy available for borrowing from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/miragesmit00smit

Physical copies available from the Chicago Public Library: https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C190419

And 325 other libraries, including about a dozen ebook options: https://worldcat.org/title/1019886692

They didn't say they wanted to bribe people. Rather, someone assumed they were going to play along and told them to do these things. They just did what they were told and played along. They just included an envelope. Things that shouldn't pass were passed. They didn't say "Hey, here is the envelope of cash, that should pay for the mess back there."

That's effectively how it's done.

Basically, if an inspector came along and refused to take the money and/or refuse to pass them, they would have accepted the refusal to be passed and most likely fixed the issue to get passed. Or end the story.

As for "hiring a guy," he came associated with the place, and effectively offered to do the work for them. They didn't seek him out. He approached them, and they just say "Ok" and played along.

But after years of this, systems develop organically to minimize the need. Others who aren't inspectors (a savvy real estate agent) but do know the rules step in. They let the rubes know what's up. And if someone accuses them, they've committed no bribes, they're just pointing out the existence of the bribery and providing free advice on how to navigate it (it's fair to assume some get kickbacks, but good luck figuring out those details).

They ran into one of those guys early. They didn't set out to hire anyone to do it. He offered for free.