MOSCOW, January 20 (RIA Novosti) – A judge and a prosecutor have been detained in Kyrgyzstan after allegedly demanding rice as a bribe to close a criminal case against a defendant.
The judge wanted a sack of rice and 20,000 Kyrgyz som ($400), the Prosecutor General’s Office in the Central Asian nation said Monday. He was arrested in a sting operation after allegedly taking a payment of 11,000 som in his office.
The prosecutor also wanted either a ton of rice or 100,000 Kyrgyz som ($2,000). Police detained him with a sack of rice in his car, apparently a down payment, the agency said in a separate statement.
They face up to 20 years in prison if charged and convicted of bribery.
Both officials wanted the payments in exchange for closing a criminal case against a local man on unspecified charges following a complaint from his wife
The impoverished post-Soviet republic of 5.5 million people came 150th of 177 countries on Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index.
