ORYOL, Russia -- Corruption in Russia has Karen Paytash of East Moline fuming mad.

Soup is served at one of the orphanages visited by the Quad-Cities delegation to Russia. Soup -- and potatoes are dietary mainstays.

``What really bothers me is, I can't tuck $5 in a card and think they're going to get it,'' Ms. Paytash said of three young women who translated for her in Russia. ``We can't send a box to the orphanage because they'll never get it.''

Ms. Paytash won't send money or gifts to her new friends, because things are routinely stolen from packages and letters in Russia.

Corruption and fraud are flourishing in post-Soviet Russia. Acting chief prosecutor Yuri Chaika said last month corruption had ``reached unprecedented levels'' and only Venezuela, Nigeria, Pakistan and Cameroon were worse.

Quad-Cities volunteers came face to face with that corruption when they landed at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.

A Customs agent nearly confiscated our journalism team's equipment because we didn't have the ``proper'' papers. A translator said it wouldn't have mattered if we had, because the Customs agent could have done as he liked anyway.

Organized crime, tax evasion and capital flight have brought the government of the largest country in the world to its knees.

A broke government cannot pay salaries or feed orphans. And while leaders in Moscow declare a new crackdown on corruption every other month, the needy struggle along at the bottom of the food chain.

When Kathy Johnson, of Taylor Ridge, and Jean Mueller, of Bettendorf, visited a transitional orphange in Oryol last month, 4-year-old Andrei was eating lunch at a knee-high table. He slurped a homey-smelling chicken-broth soup full of potatoes and carrots but little meat.

He dunked a thick slab of warm, black bread into the soup and sipped from a white enamel cup. It was supposed to hold a compote, but there was no fruit, only a thin, tea-like juice.

Andrei and his friends are lucky. The volunteer cook at the children's home is a priceless asset, center director Raisa Trubina said, because she can turn uncertain food supplies into lots of tasty, filling food.

Russians are struggling to survive the winter after the worst grain harvest in 45 years. Russia produced 29 million tons of grain last year, down from 55 million the year before.

The United States is sending 3 million tons of food to offset shortages, but many question whether the food will get to the people who need it most. Some food is supposed to be given free to orphanages and hospitals, but a government spokeswoman said they had no plans to give any to needy institutions, according to a recent report in USA Today.

Even when the food reaches store shelves, it will do little good.

``There is lots of food here in Oryol,'' said Irina Maslova, a 21-year-old student studying to be an English teacher. ``The problem is, no one can afford to buy it.''

And although the food shipments will be monitored along the delivery route to keep them from being stolen, no one knows what will happen when they reach their destination. Much could end up on the huge, cash-only markets controlled by mafia gangs.

Translators working with Quad-Cities volunteers refused to take our team of journalists to the Oryol market because it was ``too dangerous.''

There were other signs of mafia presence.

Oryol team members had to walk through a smoky room filled with shifty-looking characters to get to their private dining room. The same faces hunched over stained tablecloths every day, smoking toxic-smelling cigarettes and drinking vodka.

Translators sported nervous smiles when asked who the men were.

``People who don't have to work during the day,'' came the answer, after much discussion in Russian.

The mafia is even more visible in Moscow. Mercedes with tinted windows speed cell-phone toting gangsters through crowded streets to their next target. An estimated 80 percent of businesses in big cities pay a mafia krysha, or protection money. Organized crime made $900 million in 1996, money the government might otherwise collect.

Mafia-run prostitution is a thriving business, as NewsChannel 8 anchor Jacqueline Getty saw at the Ismailova Hotel in Moscow.

Ms. Getty stepped into an elevator to find a tall, slim girl who looked about 14 years old. The girl was wearing black velvet pants and tight body suit with a loopy, gold belt, Ms. Getty said, and her hair was in pigtails.

The girl stood in the corner and tried to keep her head down, but Ms. Getty could see her face was blotchy and her eyes were red and puffy as if she had been crying. Her left fist was clenched around a wad of rubles and room key.

``I don't know that she was a prostitute, but from the place we were in and the people we were surrounded by, you just knew why she was there,'' Ms. Getty said. ``She looked just devastated. I was only in the elevator with her for 10 seconds, but something that powerful just locked in my mind.''

The police are no help. The Moscow police chief once admitted 95 percent of his men were on the take. Russian translators in Moscow repeatedly told Quad-Citians not to go to the police if they got in trouble.

``If you go tell a policeman you're being robbed, he'll take whatever you've got left,'' one young man said.

Even otherwise honest Russians admit to the most common kind of corruption -- tax evasion. Russian officials complain their unenforceable tax code has cost the government $100 billion in uncollected taxes.

The average Russian watches powerful companies run up huge tax bills without penalty and thinks only suckers follow the law. Russia's largest corporation, natural-gas giant Gazprom, reportedly owes $8 billion.

``Only fools pay taxes,'' said Irina Zacharova, a 29-year-old disc jockey. ``If you pay all the taxes you're supposed to pay for the month, you won't have anything left.''

Corrupt officials are waiting to help. A government department director was arrested in June for taking bribes in return for misrepresenting earnings to lower companies' tax bills. Authorities found $1 million in cash and jewelry in his apartment.

Lots of money bypasses government books altogether and goes straight to a foreign bank account. Former Washington Post correspondent David Remnick, citing figures from the Russian Interior Ministry and Interpol, says more than $300 billion has left Russia illegally and untaxed.

When the Soviet experiment exploded in 1991, reformers gleefully pushed privatization -- putting state-owned businesses into private hands. Those hands turned out to be connected to the well-connected. In a series of sweetheart deals, former Communist Party bosses and other elite ``bought'' companies at bargain-basement prices and sang all the way to the bank in Zurich, Switzerland.

Whether money goes to the Mafia, to a Swiss bank account or stays hidden under a retiree's mattress ultimately does not matter. The end result is the same -- the government has no money. So it tries to make due with less, whittling budgets and cutting social programs like food for orphanages.

Mrs. Trubina has watched the food allowance for her children drop further and further. To survive, her shelter relies heavily on food donated by local residents -- including the potatoes in the children's soup.