Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

Post by fractal618 » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #201

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

> So nobody went to jail, though What is with this demented obsession on HN with sending people to jail? The response to any misbehaviour is 'send someone to jail!' Nobody even seems particularly concerned who goes to jail - it's usually just 'someone needs to do to jail for this.'

Post by vharuck » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

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.

Post by grecy » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

paranoidrobot wrote: post #89

grecy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eli…

Post by mcv » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #196

perceptronas wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by jellicle » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

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.