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Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

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Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#81

Post by cpitman »

LanceH wrote: post #44
dboreham wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's illegal to pay bribes (for now, anyway) for US companies (to foreigners): https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-pract...

You are asked for a bribe to get your goods to market in a country. That's illegal for a US company. You hire a local company to expedite the process using their customs experience at 2x the bribe -- poof legal.

No, under US law you are still responsible for bribery committed by your proxy, and have to have a process in place to ensure that all proxies follow anti bribery laws.

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#82

Post by raverbashing »

tus88 wrote: post #24
LaserToy wrote: post #21

Anyone here actually believes it is only Airbus???

Seems like international trade and bribery go hand in hand.

Let's say, international trade in low enforcement/low transparency jurisdictions

Then it's an issue of "complying" with the informal regulations or not selling

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#83

Post by D_Alex »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #4
jariel wrote: post #3

In Canada SNC Lavalin same things. This is not an easy thing though: the countries in which bribes are paid are run by corrupt people who expect kickbacks as part of doing business, and there's no other way about it. If the West wants to play morally superior on this - then 100% of Airbus, Boeing, SNC, Halliburton and massive industrials will full-on go out of business. This issue is not part of the current round of…

I question the premise. The US has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 has already made it illegal to make payments to foreign government officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business. Somehow, Boeing, SNC, Halliburton, and many other massive industrials have survived so far.

>Somehow, Boeing, SNC, Halliburton, and many other massive industrials have survived so far

>Somehow

At least in cases of SNC and Halliburton, "somehow" was by doing the illegal thing.

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#84

Post by IggleSniggle »

jessaustin wrote: post #69
p1esk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I'm a Senator/Congressman and Comcast came to me promising $500k for my re-election campaign if only I could help them slow down Google Fiber rollout in some town, is it illegal for me to agree? I mean, this is a bribe, isn't it?

It's rare that such large sums would go through the campaign-finance slot. Supposedly Biden received only $200k from the credit card industry for his awful bankruptcy "reforms". Of course larger bribes are paid, but they are less direct and less public. One method I've seen up close (I worked for Lucent back when they were in business) is to hire close relatives of favored politicians at vastly inflated salaries for…

Perhaps you're thinking of "Healthy Holly," a series of self-published children's books for which Mayor Pugh was paid over $800000, which came to light last year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/baltimore-m...

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#85

Post by sytelus »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #65
p1esk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I'm a Senator/Congressman and Comcast came to me promising $500k for my re-election campaign if only I could help them slow down Google Fiber rollout in some town, is it illegal for me to agree? I mean, this is a bribe, isn't it?

If it's structured like that, sure, but it'll not be done that way. One approach is for a politician/candidate to hold a fundraising lunch/dinner/whatever, and charge for seats. Lobbyists and other folks who want to get access to the senator will buy those tickets and get their couple of minutes to talk about whatever issue is important to them. Any direction on bill will almost certainly be of a more indirect nature…

This is how it is done: A congressman proposes a bill (written by cable company itself) such as "Neighbourhood Protection Bill". It will impose regulations on digging for new companies in the name of lower pollution and noise. Then cable company will get behind that bill in the name of betterment of neighborhoods and give ton of money to the congressman for getting elected so bill gets his vote. Then they setup a foundation created for neighborhood peace which invites the congressman to run it. Then the congressman gets to sit on boards of 3 different related companies and get paid half-million each of that "service". Not to mention all the travels and talks engagement that his sponsor will set up around the world to preach neighborhood peace. Every single of this is legal and done openly in public. Congressman will actively seek the support of sponsors for his bill.

Economics wise, there are 535 congressman. Now assume a big company can make $50B of revenues from drilling into arctic. A 10% of this can then be utlized to purchase half of US congress and which comes to about $20M/congressman price tag. However rules allow much lower election donation. So companies often setup foundations, boards etc for congressman to run and get paid $20M over the years for those services.

A congressman salary is less than $175K/yr. US Congress has shit ton of "career politicians" who have held no other jobs for decades. Somehow most of them own a significant amount of properties and wealth nevertheless. How? Above is how. Yes, politicians are massively corrupt.

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#86

Post by manfredo »

ekianjo wrote: post #80
fnord77 wrote: post #6

> Airbus for years conducted a “massive scheme to offer and pay bribes”, involving very senior executives, according to disclosures in courts in Washington DC, Paris and London, as Europe’s aerospace champion agreed to pay €3.6bn in penalties to regulators in France, the UK and the US. So nobody went to jail, though

Nobody goes to jail for "lobbying" in the US while it is clearly about the same thing as bribery. Just a legal form of it.

While lobbyists have sometimes bribed officials through gifts and perks, which is illegal, lobbying is not bribery. Say you're interesting in promoting renewable energy. You and like minded people put together resources to promote renewable energy to politicians, explaining its benefits. This activity is lobbying for renewable energy.

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#87

Post by jjoonathan »

manfredo wrote: post #86
ekianjo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody goes to jail for "lobbying" in the US while it is clearly about the same thing as bribery. Just a legal form of it.

While lobbyists have sometimes bribed officials through gifts and perks, which is illegal, lobbying is not bribery. Say you're interesting in promoting renewable energy. You and like minded people put together resources to promote renewable energy to politicians, explaining its benefits. This activity is lobbying for renewable energy.

Not only is lobbying bribery by another name, the realities of campaign finance make ours a system of mandatory bribery rather than mere moral corruption.

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#88

Post by eeeficus »

manfredo wrote: post #86
ekianjo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody goes to jail for "lobbying" in the US while it is clearly about the same thing as bribery. Just a legal form of it.

While lobbyists have sometimes bribed officials through gifts and perks, which is illegal, lobbying is not bribery. Say you're interesting in promoting renewable energy. You and like minded people put together resources to promote renewable energy to politicians, explaining its benefits. This activity is lobbying for renewable energy.

What a demagogic way of phrasing it! So no money ends up in the account of future election campaigns?

Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

#89

Post by paranoidrobot »

grecy wrote: post #78
paranoidrobot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying it's 100%, without a doubt bribery, but we're just going to use some tricky language so it doesn't sound like that. Possibly, but it'll depend on your POV and where you draw the line on what's bribery. Scenario 1: I represent a mega-corporation and I want legislation changed to make it easier for my factories to comply with pollution laws by changing the definition of pollution. Is it bribery to sa…

Nobody should be giving any money to politicians, or their campaigns, for any reason what-so-ever. I realize it's fundamental to American politics now, but that doesn't make it fundamentally wrong.

> Nobody should be giving any money to politicians, or their campaigns, for any reason what-so-ever.

I don't disagree on the fundamentals, but I think there's a lot of side effects of something like this.

How should election campaigns be funded?

I've heard suggestions of having the state pay for campaigns, everyone gets a fixed budget (or some variation of this). But this leads to issues then around who should be eligible to have campaign funding from the state and regulation around that. If Anna is standing as a candidate, what's to stop Anna's friends Barry, Celeste, and Dina standing, but spending all their campaign funds on promotion that makes it clear that Anna is actually a much better candidate.

Should candidates be able to contribute to campaign expenses themselves? For instance, in situations where there's a lot of travel involved - having better accommodation, more comfortable transport options, more assistants to help them out/etc can make a difference on even a short campaign.

What constitutes a donation? Just money? Time? Resources?

Can I hand out flyers, run a phone tree/social media account for the local council/town/city elections?

What if I own hall, can I let a candidate use that for free?

Maybe I own a restaurant, and want donate the use of that to a candidate for a big campaign speech where they're going to invite all the press. The press wouldn't ordinarily be interested in this no-name candidate, but the event is at that restaurant that you can't get a reservation to without waiting for months. I also happen to have a bunch of celebrity friends that might just attend. You can be sure that all the journos will be wanting to come along, and that it'll be making the news, even if it's just for the celebrity thing.

Maybe I'm best mates with a candidate - I love flying my private jet, can I fly them around and let them use my Uber Lux account?

If I'm on an hourly contract working for the campaign, can I work overtime without charging the campaign?

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