The article identifies the institutional origins of unprecedented corruption of the officials of the Imperial Cabinet who ran the economic complex of the Altai mining district in the 1830s-1860s. With the use of previously unknown documentary material, the facts of power abuses by the specific senior officials are revealed. The archival case of the murder of a yard maid committed by the wife of the State Councillor, Chief District Doctor F.V. Gebler is used as an example of the corruption of the bureaucracy in the Cabinet. Among the reasons for the large-scale spread of corruption in the region, the author highlights the following: a despotic specifics of the Institute of power and property in the Russian Empire, a remote nature of the bureaucratic management subsystem of the regional economy, and the arbitrariness of the authorities in relation to the disfranchised and subservient population of the Russian Altai. The conclusion on the systemic and institutional nature of corruption in the Altai mining district during this period is made on the basis of the research analysis of the documents.