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A senior Army Reserve officer who is a former California police chief smuggled US $120,000 in stolen cash out of Iraq and accepted a sport utility vehicle in a series of bribes for helping steer construction contracts in Iraq to an American businessman, court papers filed Friday said…The case involves a conspiracy that took shape in late 2003 and reached its peak in 2004, a chaotic time when contractors were routinely paid with stacks of US $100 bills seized from Saddam Hussein's government or derived from Iraqi oil proceeds.
New York Times (USA), 10 July
“Bad governance and corruption are a symptom of poverty. We have corruption in the developed countries too but here it doesn't kill people - in Africa it does.”
Bob Geldof in Bucharest Daily News (Romania), 14 July
"Some have assumed the analogy to say [corruption] is 'cancer'. This is wrong, because a virus causing a disease gets into the veins inconsiderately, whereas corruption is carried out knowingly. Corruption is a sign of degenerating moral fibre and a criminal activity."
Clive Scott, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in The Swazi Observer (Swaziland), 31 July
Shayna Silverstein and her friends jumped into expensive taxis and sped from Beirut to Damascus, preferring to dodge bombs and bribe border officials rather than wait for the U.S. government to evacuate them… The trip from Beirut to Damascus normally cost US $10. They each paid US $200 and piled into a gray Mercedes taxi that sped to the border. "We had to put our faith in our taxi driver, [he] knew the people to bribe, we got in pretty quickly."
Washington Post (USA), 21 July
"There is no grey area. If you take two bob, then you are a criminal — you have crossed to the other side. If you make that decision, you are one of them, not one of us."
John Noonan, head of Victoria State Police’s Special Operations Group in Australia, on police corruption, The Age (Australia), 31 July