You expect that Russians in the position of Vladimir Putin or the oligarchs will find ways of diverting millions of dollars to themselves. Of course the Palestinian big-shots of Fatah or Hamas are going to steal all the humanitarian aid they can lay hands on, down to blankets provided by the United Nations. It is always in the forefront of the minds of the likes of President Robert Mugabe and the thugs around him that they must appropriate whatever property they can while the going is good. These all live in kleptocracies.

But what about public figures in democracies supposedly governed by the rule of law? The scandals come thick and fast. Look at the governor of Illinois. Look at Bernard Kouchner, the one-time founder of Medicins sans Frontières, and presently French foreign minister. Pierre Péan, one of the most prominent investigative journalists in France, accuses him of a conflict of interest, taking millions of euros from two African countries, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville, on behalf of associates. Péan’s book prints relevant contracts signed by Kouchner. In a previous book, Péan established Mitterand’s disgraceful past as a collaborationist in wartime Vichy, and he looks like having a lock on Kouchner–who says, however, that everything he did is transparent and he’ll sue. We shall see.

And look at Britain, where four members of the House of Lords have been revealed taking large sums of money in return for influencing legislation. Other peers have evidently been bribed, obscuring the line between their functions as legislators and consultants. You have to go back to the eighteenth century for corruption like this. And look at Ehud Olmert, outgoing Prime Minister of Israel, who must soon go to court to answer several charges, among them one of putting in false expenses.

Evidently the imaginary world of rules hardly coincides with the real world of cash passing from hand to hand.