I'm moving this subject over from another thread. Corruption in France is big enough to warrant a thread of it's own.
Quote Originally Posted by Scotsmen, 22 september
WHEN Arthur de Villepin was caught by police following a drunken brawl in Paris, he knew there was only one man he needed to call - his father, the French prime minister.

In a show of political intervention which would be unthinkable in Britain, Dominique de Villepin spoke to the police officers who were holding his son and persuaded them not to take him into custody.

The police documents recording the incident, in a wealthy district of the French capital, have also allegedly gone missing.

But far from causing a political scandal as it might do in other countries, the story has merely caused ripples of amusement in the French press.
Link

The above pretty much sums it up.

The real shock of course lies not the intervention by the prime minister or the missing documents, but the last paragraph.

Corruption is so endemic that nobody cares - or the other way round. In fact, if you do it well or in new imaginative ways people will respect you for it.