On Thursday, the world marked International Anti-Corruption Day. President Dmitry Medvedev, who has declared that combatting corruption is one of his most important political and economic programs, should declare it a holiday for all government officials. This way, there will be at least one day a year in which no stealing or bribe taking occurs.
The decision by the world football authorities to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia got a mixed reaction from Russians. True, many people also objected when South Africa splurged on last year’s World Cup, declaring that the billions of dollars it spent on building stadiums, tourist facilities and infrastructure would have been better used to fight poverty. In Russia, nobody talks about poverty relief. Instead, most people fear that preparations for the World Cup will turn into another orgy of pilfering. The construction budget for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi has been blown out of the water with massive cost overruns, which have been blamed entirely on pilfering by politically connected bureaucrats and businessmen.
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