Some evidence for either side of this debate will be interesting :-)

The best I have is here https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021 but that does not seem to go far enough back

I think you might underestimating how bad things were in the past. For instance if Amazon warehouse workers in Colombia decided to form an union and strike for better working conditions, could Jeff Bezos call the secretary of state and ask him to threaten Colombia that US will invade if the Colombians don’t sort out their liberal/socialist problem? Hard to imagine right? But the exact same situation happened in 1928 with another famous company. Possible thousands of workers, women and children were murdered. I’ll quote one of the telegrams sent by the US ambassador:

“ I have the honor to report that the Bogotá representative of the United Fruit Company told me yesterday that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded 1000.”

‘ The US is today rivalled only by China in its degree and depth of corruption.’

Really? I mean you really believe that US is more corrupt than Russia where Yeltsin and Putin parceled off most of the resource extraction industry to their oligarch buddies (Putin also added his ex KGB colleagues) in exchange for political support?

See, what you describe is retail corruption. Small potatoes.

As I said, Russia would like to be as corrupt as the US, but is not powerful enough to be. They had to invade two neighboring countries, and more than once, to get paid any attention.