Word: scheme
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...though Bangladeshis have long grumbled about the daily bribes they have to pay, an etiquette of corruption, honored by extortionists and victims alike, has made life bearable for many years. Mahafuzur Rahaman Bahar, a member of the Bangladesh Truck Drivers' Union, says drivers once operated according to a "token" scheme. By paying a fixed sum to the first extortionist they encountered, they received a colored-paper token imprinted with the sign of a tree or a cow, which guaranteed free passage to their destination. So long as corruption operated within the defined rules of a scheme, Bangladeshis got along with...
...made to his factories by extortionists asking for money. He once refused to pay up. The result: his workers were attacked on their way to work, and the extortionists threatened to do damage to his factories. In the end, he closed one of them down. For truckers, the token scheme ceased to function about a year ago. The result is that on average a truck on its way from Dhaka to the port city of Chittagong, the country's most important commercial route, is stopped 8-12 times by extortionists. Trucks are frequently hijacked at night, and drivers who attempt...
...pleaded innocent Wednesday at the Roxbury District Court to one count of larceny by scheme over $250. He is currently being held on $600,000 bail...
Some Democrats from high-population states claim the funding scheme reflects the Bush Administration's political interests. "The political reality is that they don't have a constituency in big cities," says New York Senator Hillary Clinton. "They have been very resistant to doing the kind of national planning that would rationalize [the spending]. Nobody can deny we've made progress. But we've failed to take seriously the challenge of homeland security--because the Administration does not want to assume those responsibilities and does not want to spend the resources...
...official tells TIME that the ambassador planned to make off with $4 million kept in embassy bank accounts. He allegedly withdrew the cash, used it to buy certificates of deposit in his wife's name and apparently hoped to fade away. But the U.S. government got wind of his scheme and asked Russian officials to freeze the suspect accounts. His alleged kitty will be sent to the Development Fund for Iraq, which is helping underwrite the country's reconstruction...