"I paid US$800 ($1240) to get my job," says Ahmed Abdul, a technician working for Karada municipality in Baghdad.

"People know this is wrong, but there is no way round it."

In Iraq corruption is pervasive at every level.

"Corruption exists all over the world but is at its worst here," laments Ateej Saleh Midhat, a 26-year-old employee of the state-owned Rafidain Bank. "In 2008 and 2009 it was difficult for any graduate to have a job without paying US$500 to US$1500 according to what kind of job it was. But what about the people who cannot afford to pay?"

Iraq is the world's premier kleptomaniac state. According to Transparency International, the only countries deemed more crooked than Iraq are Somalia and Myanmar, while Haiti and Afghanistan rank just behind. In contrast to Iraq, which enjoys significant oil revenues, none of these countries has much money to steal.

Iraqis resent paying a bribe for almost everything, but do not see what they can do about it. Nor will they believe that the Government is serious in its claim to be clamping down on corruption until senior officials are punished.

The first sign that this might be beginning to happen came last month when the former Minister of Trade, Abdul Falah al-Sudani, was arrested after the plane on which he was travelling to Dubai was dramatically turned round in mid-air and ordered to return to Baghdad.

The Trade Ministry is known to Iraqis as "the ministry of corruption" because it runs the US$6 billion food rationing system, which gives endless opportunities for profiting by taking bribes from suppliers or sending tainted goods to the shops.

The Trade Ministry scandal had already become very public when Sudani's guards were involved in a gunfight at the ministry headquarters with police who had come to arrest 10 officials. They were able to escape through a back entrance during the gun battle. A video circulated from phone to phone in Baghdad shows Trade Ministry officials cavorting with prostitutes at a party.

The corruption most Iraqis run into is at a humbler level and usually means that the smallest bureaucratic hurdle can be overcome only with a bribe. Several years ago the Government starting issuing special passports, which were supposedly more secure than before. But since the easiest way to obtain one is through a bribe, in which case few questions are asked, the new passports are even more insecure than their predecessors. The same is true of other identity documents.

If a bribe is not paid to facilitate such transactions, officials subject their victim to bureaucratic harassment until he or she pays up.

Iraq has offered extraordinary opportunities for fraud since the fall of Saddam Hussein. War diverted attention from theft and made it difficult to monitor what was really going on.