Well, doesn't it seem strange to you that they SUDDENTLY discovered that there's corruption. There's two branches: - It's really the first time they ran into corruption; it would be a cool fairy-tale, but neither I nor you beleive this. - They managed to get along before despite corruption. Which means that either corruption is not so much severe (they managed to open and operate successfully and profitably, on a large scale), or that they used that corruption (bribed).

Now you can say that there's good bribe and bad bribe (first for doing legal things, second for questionable), but it's bribery in either case.