A Russian court has found something else unusual to ban online: bribery instructions.
On Oct. 10, a Krasnoyarsk city court ruled in favor of the regional prosecutor's request to ban websites providing instructions on giving illegal kickbacks to public officials. The ruling, which was announced on the prosecutor's website on Thursday, will allow for the blocking of a series of articles entitled "How to properly give kickbacks."
Such publications "negatively affect anti-corruption work, undermine government authority, and create social preconditions for committing [corruption] crimes," the prosecutor's office wrote.
Kickbacks – otkat in Russian – refer to a form of bribery in which an official chooses a private contractor to provide a service for the state with the understanding that, in return, the contractor will give the official a fixed bribe or a percent of the income from the contract.
Earlier this month, a court in the town of Arzamas blocked an online article based upon the 1837 book "How to Correctly Take Bribes." The article was published on an educational website.
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