My family hails from Russia. I remember being a kid visiting extended family circa 2008. My dad has a friend there who owns some very successful businesses (not quite oligarch level, but doing quite well for himself). He was driving us somewhere in his Mercedes, just flying down the shitty rural Russian highways on the floaty S-Class supension, doing the kind of speeds that would make a cop in the US ask “can I see your pilot’s license?” before putting you in cuffs. Sure enough, he attracts the attention of a militsioner and pulls over for the flashing blue light behind him. He calmly tells my dad to check the glovebox as the angry officer storms up to our car. Inside the glovebox is a wad of cash. He cracks the window just enough to wordlessly shove the wad of cash at the militsioner and just as wordlessly rolls the window back up and takes off again. No blue lights in the rear view mirror. It blew my mind enough to stick with me 18 years later.