Yes, and now the 'mafia' is the govt and officials are corrupt from the top down ((
DaveNY, you've not BEEN there and lived there recently ...
Example: You are working in your office and a couple of Police enter without warning - stating they have come to inspect the computers for 'pirate software' ...
'Fine' says upstanding RU citizen and businessman - and you've a warrant ?
'No', says Policeman.. We'll come back with one ...
Two hours later, they're back with a warrant and there's four 'Policemen' and an order to stand back from the computers ..
The Computers are a combination of Windows, Linux and BeOS - some of which floors the 'Police' as their flash sticks and bootable DVDs / CDs cannot cope.
They 'claim' to find unlicensed MS Office and 1S accounting software on the Windows PCs ...having given up on the BeOS ones ..
'There is no unlicensed software on any of our computers' , says upstanding and previously patriotic owner ..
'We will confiscate the computers as evidence', unless you pay us - you'll be convicted on a criminal charge of copyright theft ' says one Policeman who finds the owner won't play the game
The computers are taken and a receipt is given....
There ensures a series of Court hearings and the owners is able to prove that as a dealer for the software he has loaded - they are programmers - they are allowed said software. The computers are returned
During the time before the trial the owner was unable to leave his region and had his intl passport removed
Turns out the Police gang are moving from town to town within the region and when all clients were warned - they'd already HAD a visit ...
This type of scam went on when I lived in Moscow. I had a run in with a Moscow cop trying to solicit a bribe.
A few months after I moved to Moscow my wife and I were meeting another couple at a restaurant for dinner. We stopped at a store and my wife went in to buy something while I waited outside.
A young guy in a uniform came up to me and asked me in Russian for my ID. I said English only. He asked in broken English if I was American. I said yes. Every English speaking foreigner in Russia is American to the locals even if they're not. Then he said passport. Of course I didn't have my passport on me and didn't want to go back home to get it.
Then my wife returned. Bad news for the cop. She asked what was going on. I said he wants my passport. She said he wants a bribe. The cop says in very broken English he doesn't want a bribe, just to see my passport. Then my wife starts in with rapid fire Russian. Far too fast for me to understand.
Here's the scenario. I'm 6'8". My wife in heels is about 6'5". She's berating a skinny, 5'5", about 25 year old Moscow cop. After about 30 seconds of my wife's rapid fire questioning of the cop I'm beginning to feel sorry for him. My wife won't let him get a word in. It really must have looked like she was scolding a child.
Finally, after a minute or two of lecturing the cop my wife says in English we're going to the police station down the block to report him for soliciting a bribe. The cop, in mixture of English and Russian, is apologizing for the interruption and says there's no need to go to the police station. Then he slowly backs away and leaves.
At dinner we talked about the incident. The other couple agreed that the cop was trying to solicit a bribe when he found out I was an American. A not uncommon occurrence at the time. They said even locals get hit up for bribes to quash some imagined violation of the law.
Some locals pay others fight back. The husband says the incident probably would have ended differently if the cop had have been older and more experienced at soliciting bribes. If there had have been a couple of experienced cops it's possible we might have been arrested on some trumped up charge.