In a feat of self-defeating corruption that would impress even the most committed kleptocrat, former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori paid his own spy chief $15 million in government funds to simply go away. The payoff to intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos came as Fujimori's government was imploding in 2000 under the weight of its own scandals — a sort of corruption severance package, funded by Peruvian taxpayers. Fujimori himself admitted to the illegal payment during his embezzlement trial, explaining, with breathtaking candor, that the bribe was necessary to prevent a military coup that Montesinos himself had apparently been plotting. So: public money, paid to a criminal, to stop a crime, by a criminal. The court sentenced Fujimori to seven and a half years for this particular transaction. He had already been sentenced to 25 years for directing death squads. Anti-corruption expert José Ugaz summed up the broader damage neatly: the Fujimori decade left corruption 'embedded in the structure of power,' giving rise to the fatalistic national shrug — 'He steals, but he gets things done.' Peru's institutions, meanwhile, remained 'barely standing.' Inspiring stuff.