I used to work for a smallish company that sold Programmable Loop Controllers for factories and plants. We had a growing business in China and Russia. My former boss was actually stuck in Russia during 9/11 and had to spend an extra 2 weeks there before he could get home.
It was pretty standard operating procedure for us to write a contract with the company that included a Mercedes S class for the plant manager. It wasn't our idea, but if you wanted to do business with them, that was how it was done, you just added the price of the car into the contract, but of course you didn't add the car as a line item.
I was talking to a friend of mine whose dad worked for a competitor of ours. He had just quit his job and they were struggling a bit. The friend told me it had got to the point where he was expected to recruit women in order to get the contracts and he had to walk away. Cars and Rolex's weren't enough anymore.
Nothing surprises me about the level of corruption coming from either of those countries.
Last edited by KFWA; 10/28/20.
