Don't forget your Soap on a Rope

47 government officials who are suffering from the unfortunate affliction of being unable to not take unmarked bulging envelopes are at risk of ending up in the pen. Let's hope that they enjoy the pillow-biting, because otherwise they might find themselves rather bored.

For several years in the early 1990s, construction companies are said to have paid 90 million euros in bakhsheesh to well placed political figures in France.

To put this into context, that's 6 times as much as the French government's annual AIDS Institute research budget.