Blighty's new anti-bribe law will do more HARM than good We used to draw a distinct line between what was acceptable business conduct here at home and what we did abroad with Johnny Foreigner. Inviting Bertie from your major customer to Henley or the Derby, or waving Cup Final and Olympic tickets in his face was entirely acceptable. Slipping him £500 for an order was bribery and …
I had to bung the Ukrainian Police 200 so they would suddenly forget i had driven the wrong way down a unmarked one way street that they had staked out. in the middle of the night (they were pulling traffic going in either direction ?)
Sucks to be them now, they have all been given a 2G/3G credit card processing machine now to cut down on back handers and ensure all fines are processed properly.
Im pretty sure they will still be accepting notes in vehicle registration documents for years to come though.
> I had to bung the Ukrainian Police [....]
Do you speak the local language by any chance? If they were pulling traffic going either direction chances are it's not that you were going the wrong way, but that the street is closed to traffic during night hours, so local residents can sleep.
It isn't just business, laddy-buck. There are countries where the authorities are all shake-down artists and nothing at all happens without dickering and baksheesh, nothing. You won't even get a table in a restaurant. Nothing has a fixed price, and everything has a price. People are poor, poorly paid, and the "law" such as it is, is designed to keep the hoi poloi poor and in their place. It will only be enforced for the benefit of some small, wealthy clique that effectively owns the country. See Russia and kleptocracy for a good example. Sometimes, it is just parts of a country or social strata - Israel is that way some places. The Jewish majority has one set of ethics and oughts, the Palestinians another, and while the situations where things are different can be discerned with a religious test, the differences aren't religiously established. Business and business ethics are cultural and situational. Thinking that they shouldn't be (your "then don't") is so ethnocentric it practically reeks of what is so commonly referred is "colonialism." It isn't of course, merely cultural arrogance and ignorance parading as morality.
Speaking of "colonialism", what makes you think you have any obligation to deal with foreign countries at all, in business or otherwise, and why do you therefore feel compelled to support any corruption that may be "necessary" to engage in those dealings?
Sounds like the disingenuous protestations of a narcissist ("But how am I supposed to rob a bank, without a shotgun, M'lud?").
I find it highly disturbing that I should be down-voted for daring to agree that bribery is immoral, and that such an assertion must be the result of "cultural ignorance", especially when most of the world's corruption originates in my own culture, as people with your casual disregard for morality demonstrate quite adequately.
Having had the pathetic multiple-choice anti-bribery training here at work, I have to agree. The letter of the law appears to say that you can't fit in with local culture when abroad. For one thing it's extra-territoriality.
But yes, it's been my opinion for ages that this stupidity will just cause UK plc to fail to get any foreign contracts.
Story I heard from a US company a few years ago (IIRC it was C&W) who wanted to built a satellite downlink station somewhere in East Africa. They looked at Kenya, until the minister told them that it would cost them $250,000 to get "permission". They looked at the deal, realised that it was *Kenya* that would benefit most from the project, and prompty put the station in Tanzania.
If as part of the contract of sale there is a little box that has an agreed commission for sales person, which is then paid to them as a bonus by their employer, exactly the same thing has happened as if I had paid him a bribe (except the sales person probably will find it harder to hide the payment from their tax man). How is this (which I assume would also be totally legitimate in the UK) moral, whereas paying a bribe isn't. Because there is a paper trail for the tax-man?
The new law is just an example of how bureaucracy is used to legitimise aspects of capitalism that would otherwise be repugnant to people. If someone has filled in 100s of forms and paid all relevant 'duties' to various government offices in all countries concerned then people assume it must all be legit. A paper trail does not change the morality of the situation.
Commission is a legitimate payment for services rendered by those directly responsible for the product/service being sold. It's not an ultimatum presented by an official unrelated to the product/service, who abuses his powers to force you to pay him literally "for nothing".
Capitalism is not immoral - people are, and immoral people don't need capitalism to practice their immorality, they just need opportunity, which is far more likely to present itself under a system of lax regulations.
I find it odd that libertarians see no problem with regulating human behaviour, which unchecked tends towards immorality, but then whine about business regulations, when in fact these all-powerful, expansionist and intrinsically narcissistic corporations pose a much greater threat.
It reeks of hypocrisy.
I fail to see the issue here. For many years I worked in petrochem and all the jobs we did for middle east states were priced using "Cost Price + Contingency" + "Profit margin" + "facilitation fee" = Total price. I don't know a company that didn't do this but of course nobody would admit to doing it. Simply that was the way you did business.
On a different level the first time I went to work in Nigeria I was given a "bribe sheet" which outlined the levels of acceptable bribes for anybody you might come across, customs officials, government lackeys, local warlords, taxi drivers etc.
Agreed, tipping is definitely a form of bribery. If I have a reputation as a big tipper (I don't) I will probably get preferable treatment to other customers from staff in a restaurant/hotel etc. That seems to fall foul of the new law.
The only situation in which I see 'bribery' as immoral is when it is used to gain access to something that you would not otherwise legally be entitled to: political influence, letting drugs through customs, evading tax/import duty, getting out of being arrested, getting a cabbie to break the speed limit etc. 'Bribing' in the form of a tip or commission to get business or favourable treatment should not be illegal.
They had a big push about 10 years back to make sure that every transaction with foreign partners was above board and no bribes were taking place.
Imagine then my delight at finding out a few years later that senior figures where not complying with their own policy and were up in court with big fines looming!
Once again big corporations, say one thing and do another.
This is all absolutely pointless and won't change a thing in the long term. If person/company x wants to pay person/company y a bride, they can and will. All that will happen is the method will change in structure. Instead of handing over crisp notes, it'll be part of the contract. After all, I could pay a company £250k for something and hand over £10k in notes, or pay them £270k and the person takes a 'bonus' of £20k. The only difference is that it has to be £20k because of the additional tax etc. this method causes.
As only some bribes are in money, this will only affect a few anyway. Plenty of bribes are effectively a you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours arrangement. Look at business executives who have been doing it for years. I'll sit on your pay and remuneration committee and give you a massive pay rise. Then, you can sit on someone elses and do the same, whilst their person sits on mine and gives me a big payrise. Just as morally wrong, but perfectly legal. Doubt this law will stop it.
There is a slight difference between a bribe and a more expensive contract.
Here Mr Health Minister is $50K in cash for you to pick my company's $2M contract to run your hospital rather than my competitors $1M bid. Don't worry it's only taxpayers money and you can save that by cutting back on doctors.
Not at all. The issue with money is that it's traceable and there are loads of laws around it. Bung him $50k and you'll probably get caught under this legislation because you've been silly enough to use something traceable.
Obvious answer, just take care of him and his relatives for free for the duration of the contract. Much harder to prove, especially when you bill them, but the bills are simply rather lower than one might think. After all, who says what something should cost.
There are ways round anything in this area and all the laws in world just make people more imaginative. Just imagine this minister gets a nice directorship from the company when he leaves politics!! Now, that's never happened, has it!!
There's a whole profession based on getting around laws etc., they're called accountants. They've been finding ways of moving money around legally for dubious reasons for years. They're very good at it and stay ahead of the laws easily as George Osborne and HMRC have found out recently. You'll never stop this.
One FTSE listed metals company was recently accused of paying for the US university education of the son of the regional police chief somewhere out in the 'Stans.
"Obvious answer, just take care of him and his relatives for free for the duration of the contract."
Quite.
At my previous employers - a large US-based bank - we had mandatory Compliance Training they referred to bribes euphemistically as "facilitation payments"; it was consider acceptable that "it may be necessary, depending on the local circumstances, to offer facilitation payments to officals". But bribes were verboten,. Yeah, right.
Oh, and in Hungary - my ancestral home - try getting any form of public medical treatment without envelopes changing hands to make sure you get a clean bed, fresh food and even surgery by someone who knows how to hold a scalpel.
"Those people selling expensive corporate Olympics packages have complained that this very uncertainty has led to a large fall in demand." Well, there is one pointless sector that does not serve the public interest (those tickets should have gone to taxpayers who are funding the Olympic(TM) shitfest), and I would be very happy to see vanish forever.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again!
Managers and directors like to pay bribes because it makes their job exciting and they have something to talk about with their fellow fat, impotent, waste of human flesh co-workers
You either fail as a human being (as many of these people do) or your product sucks (as many do) if you need to bribe someone to buy into. We rather not have you push you crap on us so this is a good law. I can only hope they really enforce it.
I am all for strickter rules concerning bribery and any other form of corruption. I even would say that anybody found guilty of corruption should be disowned and baned for life from any position or office of authority..
BUT
Brittish law ends at Brittish borders. Once I am within the territory of another country, that country's laws aply, NOT Brittish laws. If one's nationality or main residency was the deciding factor and not the place of deed, then no country would be legally able to prosecute foreign criminals unless their deed is illegal in their own home country as well.
What right do we have to tell other countries what is right and what is wrong?
By international law, unless they changed it within the last 10 years, anything done at a place and time where it is legal can not be punnished even if it later becomes illegal. If bribery is allowed in Russia and i commit bribery in Russia, I can't be legally punnished for it. If it is illegal in Brittain and I do it in Russia, I still can't be prosecuted for it even if I live in Brittain and after the deed return to Brittain. If it becomes next year illegal in Russia, I can not be prosecuted for the bribes I paid this year, only for any bribes I pay AFTER the new law comes into effect, not for the ones before.
Ever wondered why authorities have problems to prosecute crimes happenning in International Waters??
If at the time I do it in the place I do it it is legal, I can not legally be punnished, I can only be punnished if it is illegal at the time and place it is commited
This is patently not true. British (1 't' btw) laws can and do extend to british citizens abroad for various things. Go to Thailand and do a Garry Glitter, and the UK plod can and will do you for that. Bribery isn't any different.
The basis for this comes from the fact that abroad you are travelling on a UK passport, which gives you certain rights - the ability to travel to another country, chiefly - and certain responsibilities, including not bribing people and sex tourism.
You want the rights, but none of the responsibilities. Tough.
I know that they can and will, yet they are by international law not allowed to. It is common for countries, especially european countries and the USA to think themselves as the measure of all standarts and to asume rights over other nations, judge other cultures by their own ideals and so on. But being a, supposedly, more moral or more developed nation soes not make it any more right or just. Quite the opposite. Claiming to be on the moral highground, we should even more respect other cultures and other nation's souverantiy and their right to have their own laws. It is acceptable of a fashist dictatorship to discriminate against the validity of other country's laws, that is after all part of what makes them what they are, but not for us.
As you say, travelling on a UK passport gives me certain rights and limitations, yet, if even during travels I am still bound to Brittish national laws, why am I also just as much bound to the laws of the country I am travelling? And when two laws oppose each other, how dare a country claim their law to be superior to the country where the deed happens? Answer, the country within which the deed is done decides if the deed is a criminal act, if it offenses, if damage is caused...or if not. Anything else would be proposterous, asumptous,arogant and exceeing the boundaries of one's authority.
It is just as wrong to demand the rights we have in our own country while being in a country where we would not have such rights. If someone form a country, say... Russia, to stay with that excmaple, travels to UK on a Russian passport, your reasoning would permit that said Russian to commit bribery in Uk. He isn't. WHy not? Because he is Russian and UK law is superior to Russian law? Or is it just a matter of, you get all the restrictions the authorities can possibly think up but non of the rights that come with the territory?
When in Rome do as the Romans.
If you refuse or feel morally or otherwise unable to comply to the cultural or legal precepts of the country you are entering, STAY OUT. If you insist that the country you are visiting or migrating to conforms to accept your culture and laws while you reject theirs, STAY OUT When it is the legal and moral norm in Russia to bribe your way, then when you're in Russia, bribe your way.
If any nation's law takes priority to others, then its the laws of the nation within whom's territory the law is applicable, UK law takes priority over other nation's law only within UK, Russion law is superior to any other nation's law only within Russian borders, American law rules America, etc....for any legal subject of border-crossing matter, we have international law, and this international law states, you can not be done for something that is legal at the time and in the place that you do it.
Absolutely not. A British passport gives you only one right. The right to have your embassy in the country try to help you. It absolutely does not give you the right to travel to another country. It's that countries decision if they allow you in or not. You can't waive your passport and demand entry. The passport then implies your responsibilities if you choose to return to the UK. You can do a Gary Glitter in Thailand and you'll probably be absolutely OK, provided you don't return to the UK.
Taking a high and mightly moral position on bribery when it is so prevalent in many areas of the world is simply arrogance. It's also delusional. Bribery is just as prevalent here, it's just hidden. At least in other countries they're open about it and aren't hypocrits. Just look at local councils to see the underhand tricks and you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours going on. Preferred or certified suppliers is one of the biggest cons in history with people paying good money to get on those lists.
"If bribery in Chinese business circles is so prevalent and aggressive as to affront even an Arab near-dictatorship then what hope have British businesses got when we're still not sure whether tickets to the rugby are an illegal bribe or not?"
Ah, but the point of that case was simply that they bribed the 'wrong' people.
New laws always present new questions. The CPS will be issued with guidance on when it is appropriate to prosecute and when it is not. Any half decent legal dept will have a gander and make sure that they brief their bosses on how to ensure they stay under the parapet.
An outright ban on bribery will inevitably make it more difficult for UK business to compete abroad, but so does anything that improves society as a rule. We don't have much manufacturing industry now 'cause we can't compete with Chinese (forced) labour. Should we lower our working conditions to match, or look to improve working conditions for others, and/or sell on added value (like Fairtrade etc)
I am completely in favour of anti-bribery laws. It may be argued that they make the UK less competitive when dealing with foreign cultures but does morality and common decency not matter? Subverting the economies and laws of other countries for financial gain should not be tolerated. We need to stop modelling ourselves on the super-capitalism so avidly pursued by the US.
PS - What an utterly self-involved and pompous article.
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