Bribery? Don't Americans call it lobbying?
It would be lobbying if involved company would have name 'Boeing' otherwise it's clearly bribery!
Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
191–200 of 251 posts
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is a system allowing lobbying better than one that bans it in favor of politicians independently making decisions based on the will expressed by and likely benefits for their constituents? Because in many situations there's a very fine line between "lobbying" and "making decisions based on the will expressed by constituents". An organized group of concerned citizens is a lobby . When it comes to outright bribin…
> I'm not sure how you even could remove lobbying from the political process. So you get a group of interested citizens together, you write to politicians, you tell them your point of view. Nothing wrong here yet. Then some of those politicians then agree with your group. You like that! So you start raising funds to get them re-elected. At face value, nothing here is wrong. Except that you just used your money as an…
> Where did it all go wrong?
At this step:
> Then some of those politicians then agree with your group. You like that! So you start raising funds to get them re-elected. At face value, nothing here is wrong.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#193> 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.
No, lobbying is not bribery.
Where is this meme coming from? It surfaced recently (from the progressive echo-chamber maybe?) as a fact when it's a complete distortion.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Every company” is obviously hyperbole. My local deli doesn’t bribe anybody. What do you really mean - every $1bn+ revenue aerospace firm?
"My local deli doesn’t bribe anybody." You sure? I mean, I agree with you that "every company" is certainly hyperbole, but bribery happens on different scales. Its not all national level and involving 6+ figure sums. I know someone who worked at a local restaurant where the owner bribed someone at the local health inspection office to be tipped off before "random inspections" giving them a couple of days notice to ge…
Vehicle inspections.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#195Earlier 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...
It's actually legal to pay someone a bride under FCPA, but only if they are already legally bound to carry out the task you are bribing them to do. The purpose of the bribe in this case is to "expedite" the service. https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/06/17/the-fcpas-fa...
I'm not a lawyer much less an international one, but "obviously" there's a difference between a fee for expediting a request that is documented officially and one that is not. I think it would be unreasonable to call the former type a bribe. I recall that there is an option in the US to get your passport faster if you pay an extra fee, but it's not a fee that somebody random made up and they collect.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#196Anyone here actually believes it is only Airbus???
While I'll get a ton of down votes for saying this: any place where government has too much presence and authority over economy is riddled with bribery. It just cannot be other way. What is that saying? Power corrupts. As for solution - not sure. It seems this is defense case so more transparency might not be an option
I think it's obvious that the opposite is true.
Any place riddled with bribery is one where government has far too little authority and individuals ostensibly working for it are running rampant.
Authority is not exactly the same thing as power though.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, this is orthogonal to governments. There's widespread bribery in the private sector too, where decisions makers are gifted to persuade them. To use your phrasing, a capitalistic view of this is that corruption is just anything that breaks the fairy tale idea that the people who work in the corporation seek the interests of the company and not their very own private interests. You can even see it play out he…
I feel a government has a scope wider than a company and is answerable to the public at large. A corporation is answerable to its shareholders so slightly different. Bribery at any level is not acceptable, and even at the corporate level if shareholders are affected, they would want to remove the person taking bribes
A company is inherently answerable to the public at large. No less than a government, it's a legal fiction that is enabled by the collective behavior of the public remaining consistent with its existence.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that because some companies were prosecuted under the statute(s) that they, or industry in general, engage in just as much activity as they would have unregulated.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a demagogic way of phrasing it! So no money ends up in the account of future election campaigns?
Money isn't even the worst of it at this level. It's about networking, and what you can ask for. A top politician doesn't need to be bribed when they understand perfectly well that if they happen to need a little pocket money, they can just come and hold a speech for six figures. If the money will be there when you need it, there's only risk in letting it lie in your bank account. Likewise, blackmail. People imagine…
"He has far too much ego to serve someone else for life"
Well, that's reassuring.
Re: Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty obvious there is quid pro quo in many cases. A strong society should have regulated channels for lobbying and ban any contact between lobbyists/industry and politicians outside of those channels, including after office.
> including after office. A politician might cover or be involved with a lot of different industries during tenure in office. You can't go to work in any of them after? What if you're one-term-and-done at age 45? What are you supposed to do? Sure, you could ban them. That's a sure-fire way to a government of low-competence, career politicians.
Corporate decisions are made all the time under embargo from such conflicts of interest and no one considers that perverse