[kmeisthax]

Making corruption official is problematic. First off, making the practice official makes pricing a lot more transparent. If a country just outright says "no-questions-asked visas for $1000, citizenship for $10,000" then that also means the immigration control officer can't demand $2000 bribes to someone who can't meet the official immigration rules.

Furthermore, one of the advantages of widespread corruption is that everyone has to do it, which means everyone can be prosecuted for it. You could, say, require political candidates to pay million-dollar bribes, and then if those candidates actually get popular enough to threaten your power, prosecute them for bribing themselves onto the ballot. If everyone's a criminal, it doesn't mean the crime isn't a crime. It means you can strip people of their rights at any time without question.

If corruption were made official, this goes away. Someone who bought a golden visa or passport can't be prosecuted if the procedure for buying it was on the books and above-board - even if it's priced like some kind of "Sybil-resistant" anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency hellscape of humans-as-piles-of-money.