Former Dutch PM used to have an old Nokia with a very limited capacity to store messages[0], so he could always say he had to delete messages so he could keep receiving new ones.
[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-vol...
[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-vol...
I'd assume many high ranking Western politicians do something similar, while paying lip service to high minded ideals about openness, transparancy and democracy.
It's always either public "servants" in power, or the rich people, putting themselves outside of the rules. If you are an elected official, and make a stunt like this, it should be grounds for immediate dismissal, IMO. But, alas, nowadays these kinds of things are so minor and irrelevant, in the sea of ridiculously horrible stuff they do.
It's at least refreshing that there are still places, like the Netherlands in this case, where there are some (even when it's surface-level) repercussions of such behavior.
I don't think off-the-record communication always implies corruption. I imagine it to be impossibly hard sometimes to get people to agree on anything (which is basically a PM's entire job), if all communication must happen out in the open.