Hacker News Reader

Comment by johansch | Hacker News Reader

My feeling is that data center services are much cheaper and more reliable in Europe, so they have probably moved most things that are not directly frontend-facing to CIS there.

(Everything just works and there are no insane bribes to pay to various mafias.)

View on HN

Oh no, at least not now. Electricity and land so cheap today in Russia, what Yandex starts to build and sell their datacenter to provide "cheap AWS alternative for Russian companies".

But how about the bribes (to get e.g. electricity)?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/business/global/12ikea.htm...

Yandex is a public company with stocks on NASDAQ. Can you ever imagine how it is hard to hide bribes inside of public company budget? :)

Two words: "consultancy services"

You can check it on sec.gov. Yandex spend nothing on consultancy for 2014 and 2015 years

I can't be bothered to dig right now, but you're saying that a company with 5000+ employees did not use any consultants at all, zero, for 2014 and 2015? I really can't believe that.

Edit: there are many ways to hide bribes, of course. Typically it involves overpaying for something. It would be hard for even a non-corrupt tax authority to tell the difference between having bad negotiation skills and bribes.

My point is "big non-government companies in Russia doesn't pay any bribes". But you're right, it's definitely possible do hide some amount of bribe money if you really want to.

Just give someone a big performance bonus with the understanding that part of it is to be used on bribes? Seems rather easy.

Nope, both salaries and bonuses (even on C level) is too low in Russia to hide any amount of bribe in them. Anyway, I never heard about bribes for electricity for last 5 years in Russia.

I think you're an advanced version of a putinbot :).

He's an employee of Yandex, well-known in the Russian dev community.

Well-known? Thanks :)

> salaries and bonuses (even on C level) is too low in Russia to hide any amount of bribe in them

Let's say someone claims that their programmer genius Ivan saved a company ~1m USD/year with latest commit; and awards him $100k. And you see this unusual bonus, how are you going to know 99% of that doesn't go to someone other than Ivan?

Typical Ivan with good developer skills costs $30k/year in Moscow. But you are right, theoretically it is possible to hide some money if you really wants to. As far as I know there's no big non-gov companies who spend something on bribes right now. May be it's because I too believe in humankind.

Not very. International listings don't need to abide by normal US listing regulations for financial reporting.

Bribes for infrastructure is not how modern days high level corruption works in Russia. What happens is that for various preferences that a company receives from the state like tax rebates, cheaper electricity etc. one pays back to the official who authorized the deal. The payment (otkat or "rollback" in Russian) is typically indirect, like using a supplier or outsourcing to a company where the official or their relatives have a stake.

The direct bribes is really for low-level clerks like police officers or fire hazard inspector s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com