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Airbus ran ‘massive’ bribery scheme to win orders

ft.com

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

#211

Post by bumby »

7952 wrote: post #141
manfredo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This breaks down when politicians get some kind of personal benefit such as campaign contributions or a consulting job. This is a conflict of interest and should exclude them from any vote about the interests of the lobbyist.

I remember a portion of Lessig’s “Republic Lost” where a congressperson was quoted to the effect that accepting money from lobbyists wasn’t bribery if it came after voting on a topic. It was a reward not a bribe.

Everyone has a right in the US to petition their government but damn if that doesn’t sound like a convenient workaround

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

#212

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#213

Post by lordlimecat »

7952 wrote: post #141
manfredo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This breaks down when politicians get some kind of personal benefit such as campaign contributions or a consulting job. This is a conflict of interest and should exclude them from any vote about the interests of the lobbyist.

>This breaks down when politicians get some kind of personal benefit such as campaign contributions or a consulting job.

Which is not lobbying. It's illegal quid pro quo.

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

#214

Post by aguyfromnb »

rocqua wrote: post #177
aguyfromnb wrote: post #170

Earlier 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…

>How to solve this? Limit political spending to natural persons, and limit their contributions.

I think this would prove to be exceedingly difficult in practice. In fact, this kind of is the system we live under, and it doesn't work.

Sure, you could argue for changes in the amounts, and who can donate to what, but consider this: I believe Obama's biggest corporate donor in 2008 was Goldman Sachs, and the value of their contribution was on the order of $1,000,000 (correct me if I'm wrong). Considering the funds that Goldman Sachs has access to, and the cost of a Presidential campaign, this is a pittance.

Clearly there are other forces at work here. You can fiddle with the numbers, but I don't know how you set up a system that doesn't reward "cheaters" or the already wealthy (ie received their "contributions" in advance). Which is where we're at.

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

#215

Post by hogFeast »

gdy wrote: post #126
hogFeast wrote: post #15

Thank god. A particularly nasty aspect of this story, alluded to at the bottom but not made explicit, is that Airbus was taking massive export credits (in the UK, they got the lion's share of the budget). It was only in the UK that Airbus was required to actually required to produce documentation about the customer, and the scheme was only uncovered when someone at UKEF realised that Airbus wasn't doing this and the…

"Airbus is everything that is wrong with the corporate world." But it makes planes that don't crash like Boeings.

Boeings look unsafe now but are Airbus really any safer? We are looking at a small sample of extreme events. And just generally, I would not put a great deal of confidence in a company run by politicians...that doesn't mean Boeing is great btw, just that it is probably less bad.

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

#217

Post by potatochup »

Havoc wrote: post #131

As a flyer: Do their planes fall out of the sky due to pervasive dysfunctional corporate culture? Nope. So yeah not great & but relatively speaking I can't say I particularly care

Until they start bribing the FAA to certify their unsafe planes

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

#218

Post by naveensky »

perl4ever wrote: post #197
naveensky wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to be clear, are you talking about a publicly listed company or feel that every business, let's say a small grocery store as well is equally responsible.

I feel a company is responsible to its customers and shareholders, that's about it.

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

#219

Post by ksec »

spenczar5 wrote: post #45
yalogin wrote: post #22

Every company doles out bribes. In many countries bribery is the way to go. Things don’t happen without it. They just find creative ways to make it legal that’s all.

“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

That may be true, but Deli are also often the target of vendors, distributors for kickbacks. They may not have bribed anyone, but they could also have been bribed.

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