[Uwqye2134trf]

When I worked in Russia, that was a common way to pay corruption fees for running a business. The way to go was to "employ" some person who never showed up to work, and pay "salary".

Companies I worked for were branches of American ones. They were receiving funds from US, paying salary to software developers, and did not sold anything on local market, no cash was used, hence the workaround with fake employee.

[lifty]

This is a known practice in some Eastern European countries as well.