Not necessarily. Making that statement, setting up in a country that has enough issues to make it plausible, and then not paying the bribe would also make a lot of sense. See also: no log VPNs that actually were logging.
Worst case scenario they shut down, collaborate fully with the police and keep all the profits up til then. Better case scenario they make a deal with the police and keep operating and making profits while covertly providing assistance. Best case scenario the issue never comes up and they make all the profits without having to spend those expenses.
My impression is that in this kind of shady web hosting the companies never last that long so you wouldn't want to invest a lot in bribes and multiple data centers and so on when you could lie and make short term profit.
Note also that corruption isn't a boolean flag. First off the cop make take the exact same strategy: take your money, do nothing else, and hope their boss never gets interested in you while planning not to protect you if anything comes up. Furthermore there are all sorts of anticorruption efforts in that area linked to US aid. That doesn't mean there isn't corruption, it does mean that if a major US corp works with the FBI in a major investigation the local police may rather piss you off than lose critical aid funding.
Worst case scenario they shut down, collaborate fully with the police and keep all the profits up til then. Better case scenario they make a deal with the police and keep operating and making profits while covertly providing assistance. Best case scenario the issue never comes up and they make all the profits without having to spend those expenses.
My impression is that in this kind of shady web hosting the companies never last that long so you wouldn't want to invest a lot in bribes and multiple data centers and so on when you could lie and make short term profit.
Note also that corruption isn't a boolean flag. First off the cop make take the exact same strategy: take your money, do nothing else, and hope their boss never gets interested in you while planning not to protect you if anything comes up. Furthermore there are all sorts of anticorruption efforts in that area linked to US aid. That doesn't mean there isn't corruption, it does mean that if a major US corp works with the FBI in a major investigation the local police may rather piss you off than lose critical aid funding.