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Comment by ilyak | Hacker News Reader

It does. But I don't think they deserve some special rights because of that or because of their size; that is, a right to use corruption (when trying to do something questionable) and blame corruption (when it gets in their way) at one time.

As for improving the lifestyles, you'll soon realise that cheap chinese wares don't improve the lifestyles that much. Cheap, but ugly and non-durable.

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Are you claiming that Ikea is using corruption (bribing someone) in Russia? On what grounds?

Because every big corporation uses corruption unless proven otherwise. Sorry.

Especially global corporations are known for doing it in less economically developed countries to own them as they wish. Example is South America: there were some wars, even, growing out of conflict between two American oil corporations.

You as a Russian should know better than to generalize about others, in the same way Russians are being unfavorably generalized elsewhere. It just makes you look as bad as them.

Well, doesn't it seem strange to you that they SUDDENTLY discovered that there's corruption. There's two branches: - It's really the first time they ran into corruption; it would be a cool fairy-tale, but neither I nor you beleive this. - They managed to get along before despite corruption. Which means that either corruption is not so much severe (they managed to open and operate successfully and profitably, on a large scale), or that they used that corruption (bribed).

Now you can say that there's good bribe and bad bribe (first for doing legal things, second for questionable), but it's bribery in either case.

Do you see the title of the original article: it includes the expression "fed up". It implies they have been fighting corruption issues before, but until now managed to stomach it. Now, however, they are fed up with it, resorting to going public. See?

How did they "fight" exactly?

By refusing to pay them?

This is an attitude that I see more out of writers from countries with corrupt governments. Perhaps it's a way of trying to justify your own country's problems, rather than working to fix them?

I don't believe you can operate a large business in Russia and not pay bribes. To think otherwise is naive.

Although my experience is 5 years old, I don't think things have changed so much that Ikea isn't paying bribes.

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