Since you said I could do any "shady government story" instead I decided to write about the time I had to bribe multiple government officials to get my passport renewed 2 months ago!

The maze of bribery for passports here in Venezuela started in late 2017/early 2018 when the government announced that they didn't have the money to provide the paper for the passports(lol oil money has to go to their pockets how dare you suggest they use it to buy paper)

The bribes started as soon as the announcement happened, the website to process your passport requests was taken down so you have to go in person to make the request, there you will have to make your first bribe, the government people don't give a flying fuck about your issues and they won't help you arrange the paperwork, they will insist that something is wrong and that you have to try again.

Depending on the mood, the person will either tell you to fix it yourself or that he can help you for a fee, outright asking for a bribe for a process that he is already being paid for, others won't tell you that and you have to approach them with a bribe offer, I got "lucky" and the girl that took my papers told me that she could accelerate my process if I gave her 40$ which was like 5 minimum wages 2 months ago.

After dealing with her I had to wait 2 weeks to recieve the sticker, since there's no paper, instead of printing a new passport they take one of the pages and put a sticker that extends the passport life for 2 years.

When I went to pick it up, I was ready for trouble again, the girl was not there this time but the guy that took me in basically told me that he was going to held my sticker hostage until I paid him 20$, he was more aggressive but asked for way less money, which I found interesting.

60$ might not sound like a ton, but here it's good money to buy food for months, I had to go thru this and pay up because I'll be leaving soon and I had it relatively easy, I've heard stories of people asking 100$+ to process your request when it's actually supposed to be free and the sticker isn't even that good, it's just a copy of your passport card with a different expiration date... I'm glad I'm leaving soon...

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