In the most recent survey conducted by the anti-corruption organization Transparency International in Bulgaria, respondents ranked the courts as the country’s most corrupt institution. But asked to whom they had paid the greatest sum in bribes, the police was the most frequent answer.
The online portal e-vestnik (December 10) sheds light on this apparent contradiction.
“Let’s be honest,” it writes. “Before a criminal even appears in court, the police can protect him by turning a blind eye or concealing evidence. The same applies for investigating officials, as well as for public prosecutors, who can simply drop a case.
“It’s only after the criminal has gone through all these instances and his indictment has actually landed in court that you can blame the judges for not finding him guilty…. But criminals are often acquitted for lack of evidence and not because the judges are too lenient or corrupt. Admittedly, there are judges who are corrupt, but no more than the others in the system. In fact, probably a bit less.”
• • • • •
Massachussetts Republicans can’t be blamed if they react with anger, not civility, to The Boston Globe’s new revelation that Scott Brown raked in off-the-charts donations from the finance industry while toiling to weaken the financial regulatory bill. — Frank Rich, The New York Times, December 19
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
Corruption may be in the eye of the beholder. In a certain democratic nation in the Western World elected judges receive financial contributions to their election campaigns from lawyers who appear before them. If that occurred in Bulgaria how would we in the West characterize the practice?