The practice of paying bribes for everything from setting up a business to obtaining medical care is costing Russians tens of billions of dollars annually, the head of a respected think tank said on Tuesday.

Georgy Satarov, a former Kremlin adviser and president of the INDEM research center, said a two-year study by the center showed that Russians spend at least dlrs 37 billion a year on bribes, the Interfax news agency reported.

By far the biggest part of that sum - $33.5 billion - is business-related bribes, Satarov said.

In nonbusiness bribes, medical care is the biggest sphere for bribery, accounting for dlrs 600 million, he said. Would-be students spend dlrs 449 million on securing university admission, motorists shell out $368 million on payoffs to traffic police, and plaintiffs and defendants hand over $274 million to judges in hopes of influencing their rulings.

Satarov said his calculations were based on modest estimates.

"In reality, they could be three times as high," Interfax quoted him as saying.