I live in a developing country. What I find is that the corruption is generally easier to navigate here that it was in the USA. The corruption in the USA is much more entrenched, in the form of regulatory capture. At the local level this can look like a local ordinance where “only a contractor with xy and z (only one of which is needed for the job) can bid, favoring a specific contractor. Here you just figure out compliance with the person in charge.

Corruption is eliminated by properly aligning incentives. Capitalism is also all about properly aligning incentives. Moving to a more capitalism-heavy system usually causes countries to get much richer.

Eastern Europe went through a similar transition. Before the iron curtain fell, the eastern bloc operated on favors more than it operated on money. This definitely isn't the case any more.