I found an article that talks about International Bribery and how a company from California bribed a Mexican company by buying their CEO a yacht and a Ferrari. This was done in order to win a bid and be awarded a contract for 5.4 million dollars. Not a bad investment if you ask me. Cost of bribes is around a 1/2 mil for 5.4 mil worth of business. It turns out though that this is against the law due to international bribery laws. My question to that is what is considered a bribe? Would it be considered a bribe if I would bid a job but then throw in a 30% discount if they give me their business and allow me the chance to bid all future jobs? According to the laws "Any means of incitement used in order to secure financial gain" would be considered a bribe. This seems awfully open for interpretation. Every request for proposal that my company bids out includes a discount or incentives for people to use us over our competition. We could offer anything from a 30% discount if balance is paid in full before work begins, to a 10% discount or finders rewards if we get additional work from the original source and or any of their friends. So now I ask the question again, is this bribery? My company offers a discounts in exchange for financial gains.......so another words we are inciting people to use us by giving them money.
The problem I have with this is that this is a norm for any transaction that happens within a business. People are always haggling for more money off or perks, but within the US it is okay to do this. When a business does this overseas it becomes a problem.
Personally I think this is a waste of money and resources to monitor these actions. A company needs to do whatever it can to ensure it's survival. If it takes a new Ferrari then so be it. That just shows that the winning company was willing to give more to get the job. I will admit that I do not know every aspect of the law for international bribery, but the nutshell version seems that it is open to interpretation and I feel that this is a law that should be thrown out.
That is definitely something to think about! Money does seem to control everything!! Needing it or if you have it wanting even more! I believe it goes “Money is the root of all evils”. Take for example the movie Wall Street and everything that money can cause a person to do. But when you talk about bribery . . . what is the real definition. How can it truly be classified? In other classes we have talked about how it is against the law to provide discount to a customer (or a price that is less to one than to another) unless you can show just cause such as for quantity based. But really . . . who actually follows that!?! The examples you noted are good and I have many similar ones like this at my work, so is that illegal? I can understand your opinion on throwing that law out, but then again there is times I guess where you could say the law would be good. If a company wants to buy business so be it, it happens all the time with discounts, but can it not be by materialistic items? But looking at the example noted in regards to Tyson Foods, bribing Mexico officials to certify chicken products for export?? That leads to many other bad examples I am sure . . . bribery to certify something is safe when it isn't and the list could go on and on, leading to a further corrupt world.
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