Corruption in Kazakhstan

Video Transcript

And corruption, again, is in all walks of life prevalent everywhere, to include even the police. Especially the police, as they will tell you, the Central Asians. Traffic police for example, again, they're conscripts that have been recruited into the Ministry of Interior. All police fall under the Ministry of Interior, to include even traffic cops who are notoriously crooked, mostly because they are paid a pittance. And so the only way that they can afford to even feed themselves, let alone their family, is by their bribes that they get. For example, driving around, we don't drive ourselves; we have a driver contracted by the Embassy. So we're driven everywhere. But even though our drivers work for the U.S. Embassy, they'll be pulled over by the traffic cops. And there's a certain protocol for that, where the traffic cop will flag you down with the baton. [The] driver has to pull over. I've asked, 'What will happen?' It's not like in the United States where a car comes and will pursue you. It's just a cop standing in the road, and it's like every fifth car, he'll flag down, whether the person is speeding or not, it doesn't matter. It's just every fifth car, he's going to flag down the car and find something wrong. Either your registration's not proper or something. Or you were exceeding the speed limit by five miles an hour. Well, how do you know this? Because he doesn't have a radar gun. Yeah, well, exactly. 

In this video, a U.S. Army civilian employee discusses corruption and bribery within the police force.