Venezuela’s Bribing Menu Brings Transparency to Corruption
You have to know someone who knows someone who can connect you so you can make a deal.
Editor’s Note: There are few places as chaotic or dangerous as Venezuela. “Life in Caracas” is a series of short stories that seeks to capture the surreal quality of living in a land in total disarray.
There’s this bribes list making the rounds on WhatsApp, audaciously laying out, restaurant-menu style, the going rates: $4,500 for a passport, $400 for a Chilean visa, $7,000 to erase a criminal record, $100 for the stamp that validates college diplomas. Those are the latest offerings from one of the “gestors”—fixers, roughly translated—who are in hot demand all over town.
Usually, they don’t advertise quite so brazenly; what they’re selling, after all, is illegal. You have to know someone who knows someone who can connect you so you can make a deal. But the circulation of even this one list highlights just how widespread bribing has become here.