A scary thing happened on the way to Moscow Airport

It happened to my son on his last trip to Moscow in March 2004. His permanent residence is in Poland where he lives with his Polish wife and works as editor for a publication of an international non-profit organization. His job involves traveling to many different countries in Europe including Russia. After 4 days of work and business conferences in Moscow he was ready to do some shopping before returning home to Warsaw. He spent several hours in the city center's Pushkin Square just a few blocks distance from Red Square, then planned to catch his shuttle bus back to the hotel. He had reserved a taxi for 7 p.m. to take him from the hotel to Sheremetyevo - Moscow Airport to catch 9 p.m. flight to Warsaw. To get to the shuttle quickly he had to use an underground passage to cross to the other side where the bus was supposed to stop. There he was suddenly approached by a group of policemen! One of them demanded "dokumenty" from him. He gave him his passport. The policeman discovered that his 'hotel registration' was valid only until March 19 while it was already March 21 and had expired, though his visa was valid through the 21st. The Russians still require foreigners to carry their hotel registration with them when in the country just like in the "good old Soviet days". The people in Moscow who made his reservation for him had by mistake made it for only 2 days. He had extended it for 2 more days but the hotel forgot to give him the paper slip to carry in the passport, which he didn't notice. Then the policeman asked him where he was staying. When my son told him and gave him the hotel name and phone number to verify, they said "it is a very serious problem" and that he will have to be taken to the police station! In spite of his repeated reminder that he had to catch international flight shortly and was getting late they told him he will have to come with them and pay a very large fine! He had no idea what was going to happen. It didn't look good. Two of the policemen took him to a police car parked on Pushkin Square. My son asked the one sitting in the front passenger seat how much is the fine going to be. After a brief consultation with his colleague at the wheel, he said "100 dollars". My son said he had only $50.00 with him, though he had more. He pulled out a 50-dollar bill and showed it to them. They took the money, gave him back his passport and let him go! He just barely caught his bus back to the hotel in time. Though he had once read in Moscow Times about several incidents where foreign tourists were taken to police station, detained for hours, forced to hand over their wallets and "cleaned out" of all their money, he never imagined it would happen to him. After all he had visited the country before without problems. While the whole thing was going on he was worried he would miss his flight and how terrified his wife would be if he didn't show up that evening. Not surprisingly, he is very reluctant to visit Russia again. This article was published by: http://www.searchwarp.com/ PS: Top photo; Kremlin at night.