The etiquette of bribery

A Russian acquaintance told the story of two friends who'd been out drinking in St Petersburg and then decided, at two o'clock in the morning, to race each other to Moscow. The car of one of them was much faster than that of the other, so that man put his foot down confidently and sped off. On the motorway, he was stopped by a policeman. He gave him a generous wad of notes, drove on and called his friend to see where he was. "You've got no chance of winning this race, my friend," he declared, "but I must warn you, I've just been stopped by the police, which was expensive." "How much did you pay?" his friend enquired. The man in the fast car told him that he had given the man a large amount of cash to be sure that he could carry on with the journey. "Oh, you paid way over the going rate!" exclaimed his friend, "You have no chance of winning this race now: you'll be stopped by every policeman between here and Moscow!"