I worked briefly for a startup that wanted a .sy domain. That's Syria. They had to get the State Dept. involved (Hillary Clinton had to sign one of the documents, she was Sec. of State at the time.) The package they sent to Syria was a kind of Matryoshka doll: a package with some grease (cash!) and another package inside, that in turn had the grease for the next level of the bureaucracy and another package for them to pass on, which contained more grease and another package... All in all four or five layers of payments and bureaucracy. They got the domain name but then abandoned it for some reason I don't know (I suspect it was just more trouble than it was worth to have "foo.sy" and deal with Syrian government rather than just "foosy.com".) US$20,000 down the drain. FWIW this was all official enough that it wasn't legally bribery.
