Posts Tagged ‘FCPA’

Facilitation Payments No More

Posted on December 10th, 2009 at 1:18 pm by Aleksandr Shkolnikov
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Regions: Global | No Comments »

Facilitation payments – small payments to government officials to facilitate action on their part – are the grey area of corruption.  In the eys of some they are a bribe, in the eyes of others they are not. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has long made an exception on facilitation payments, allowing companies to make small payments to government officials as long as such payments are properly recorded and reported.

I remember working on TI Business Principles for Countering Bribery, which took a tough stance on facilitation payments, and the fascinating discussions that would take place in working group meetings over the issue.  Eventually, the working group drafting the principles took a tough stance of recommending not accepting facilitation payments (only in extreme cases of a threat to a person’s life).

But the tide is changing. As the WSJ notes, the new OECD recommendations call for banning facilitation payments. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bribery Abroad Doesn’t Pay

Posted on November 27th, 2009 at 6:42 am by Anna Nadgrodkiewicz
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Regions: Global | No Comments »

Until recently, paying bribes to foreign government officials was considered an acceptable business practice, or even a “necessary” expense eligible for a tax write-off. Those days are over. As the Economist points out, countries are becoming more and more stringent on how they view – and punish – bribery abroad. It is not just America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), originally passed in 1977, that is much more strictly enforced. Britain, Germany and other countries whose companies do business all around the world are now paying attention, too, after a string of high-profile cases of questionable business practices abroad. And the issue is not just what the company itself does since the courts increasingly hold multinationals responsible for the conduct of their local suppliers and distributors. Read the rest of this entry »

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