A Russian civil servant was caught trying to eat a 35,000 ruble bribe to stop it being seized as evidence.
Anton Gritsay, 38, head of the Emergencies Ministry in Zelenograd, was tipped off that he was about to be arrested and locked himself into a toilet.
Police burst in and arrested him, but not before he had swallowed the money, the equivalent of about £800.
But he failed to escape justice after determined anti-corruption officers took him to the local hospital.
Once there, surgeons recovered seven of the notes from his stomach that were enough to see him taken to court.
The arrest was filmed by other officers and a police spokesman said: "We investigated after a complaint that he had been paid a bribe to overlook breaches in safety standards during a fire safety inspection."
Gritsay has pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe and was released on bail, and has been fired from his job.
Eating bribes has become a popular trend in Russia, leading to the league table that started in March 2010 when a policeman ate a 2,000 ruble bribe in the Chelyabinsk region.
Before Gritsay, the previous recordholder was another policeman from the Saratov region who swallowed 15,000 rubles in March 2011.
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