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Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

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Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#121

Post by throwaway0a5e »

q1w2 wrote: post #94
vbezhenar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Kazakhstan and while I don't have any evidence, I'm pretty sure that many huge western companies operating here bribed officials. I don't think that's necessary part of local culture. Of course in poor country officials with $200/month salary are happy to get $1000 gift for signing $100 000 agreement. Western companies are huge part of corruption source here. That's my opinion. I've heard that Ikea decided…

Same in India. In fact, public officials are paid very little with the expectation that they will supplement their income with bribes. It's just absolutely normal to get literally anything done with a government office in almost any non-western country.

If it's anything like eastern Europe it's really not that bad, just different. It just means the state has less direct control over its employees. In some cases this is good for the populace. In some cases this is bad for the populace.

If the people in the building permitting offices in CA got paid the way they do in India there probably wouldn't be a housing crisis there.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#122

Post by filoleg »

q1w2 wrote: post #94
vbezhenar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Kazakhstan and while I don't have any evidence, I'm pretty sure that many huge western companies operating here bribed officials. I don't think that's necessary part of local culture. Of course in poor country officials with $200/month salary are happy to get $1000 gift for signing $100 000 agreement. Western companies are huge part of corruption source here. That's my opinion. I've heard that Ikea decided…

Same in India. In fact, public officials are paid very little with the expectation that they will supplement their income with bribes. It's just absolutely normal to get literally anything done with a government office in almost any non-western country.

Yup, it is mindbogglingly unimaginable to people who spent their whole lives living in the west, but as someone who moved out of Russia over a decade ago, it is the exact same thing there. Extremely normalized in every single aspect.

Applying for a passport? Well, you can do it normally, wait 9-12 months, hope papers don't get lost in the process (again), and maybe eventually you will be able to get it after a 2nd or 3rd try. Maybe not, who knows, you might just give up.

Or, instead, you could give "little something" to the passport clerk and their boss, and your passport will get reliably done in 3-4 months. And this "little something" is pretty much expected, and most people who can afford will pay it. A lot of governmental services are just built with an expectation of a bribe. If a bribe isn't present, then the process will almost definitely go wrong in every single way possible.

Same with cops, except worse, because much more is at stake. Routine "ID check stops" are expected, and you better have a bribe ready, unless you want to get in trouble for "insubordination" or something much worse.

Pretty much any interaction with government or anything even tangentially related, where you need to get something done, you are going to be almost ostracized and make your life miserable if you don't bribe. Bribing gets truly awful and scary when it is an everyday expectation on even the most routine levels.

EDIT: People in comments have pointed out that India isn't like that at all. My comment wasn't meant to have anything to do with India. I have never been there, so I cannot make a statement on it either way. I was only trying to describe the realities of "bribes are the expected norm in everyday life" experience using the place I was personally familiar with, which was Russia.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#123

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ipaddr wrote: post #107
edgyquant wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say at that level of acceptance it isn’t a bribe.

It is a bribe but it is accepted and perhaps not illegal

It probably is illegal but the countries have weak rule of law (if rule of law is even a thing in those countries at all). Note that there are differences between fees and bribery, if something can be legally presented as a fee, it is no longer considered a bribe (important if you are an American or American company).

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#124

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

I’m disappointed but not surprised that the title is editorialized. It specifically leaves off “whistleblower alleges”. It’s literally one disgruntled former employee claiming this. But as usual for HN these days a tiny populations claim - in this case a population of one - is stated as fact.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#125

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Qem wrote: post #10

My work involves a public sector organization in Brazil. In the last years there was a big push towards microsoft products at my workplace, to a point where emails with announcements from corporate IT sometimes looks and sounds like spam pushing MS products. Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.

> Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.

Usually the latter, often it is just marketing, but you can never discount the former, and the lines are often blurred.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#126

Post by SubiculumCode »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #6

> "What is a shock: This time around, the SEC and DOJ have both declined to investigate Microsoft over the same types of bribes in the Middle East and Africa. They acknowledged my evidence (which I submitted three times) yet did not take up the case, claiming that the current pandemic has prevented them from gathering more evidence from abroad—even though I have already provided documentation that I believe shows Mic…

Corruption does terrible things to a society. I look at how Russia, Mexico, Greece and others were/are absolutely crippled by wide-spread, run-of-the-mill corruption at all levels of government. We have always been our best in the USA when corruption has been the least prevalent. The "legalized bribery" from campaign donations and regulatory capture, while not as bad as in those other countries, does not do our system justice.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#127

Post by ganzuul »

mc32 wrote: post #120
q1w2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in India. In fact, public officials are paid very little with the expectation that they will supplement their income with bribes. It's just absolutely normal to get literally anything done with a government office in almost any non-western country.

One could argue it’s more efficient. If you need to get something done, at least there is a way to receive service whereas in the US because there is little bribery, you’re at the mercy of the bureaucrat who doesn’t depend on your bribe to survive and so has lost the incentive to serve you.

In the west we simply don't recognize that system as democracy. For your officials to not take bribes means their relatives get offended that the office doesn't get them special treatment. That is feudalism. It means you built nothing together and have nothing to be proud of.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#128

Post by markdown »

mc32 wrote: post #38
lemoncookiechip wrote: post #6

> "What is a shock: This time around, the SEC and DOJ have both declined to investigate Microsoft over the same types of bribes in the Middle East and Africa. They acknowledged my evidence (which I submitted three times) yet did not take up the case, claiming that the current pandemic has prevented them from gathering more evidence from abroad—even though I have already provided documentation that I believe shows Mic…

Are the bribes being directed by MS US or are these things taking place in overseas offices where customs are different? One example was Hungary --I imagine Ukraine and Nigeria too would have executives there who are part of the local culture where they do things differently. While the actions go afoul of US law, they may be in line with local customs culture and practices --that is harder to root out as now you are…

> While the actions go afoul of US law

LMAO, surely you jest! The US is one of the most corrupt societies in the world. Where else is it not only accepted practice, but enshrined in law with "money is speech".

Please see https://www.fec.gov/ (BWAWAAHAHAHHAH, this is an government website listing bribes... they don't even have to hide it!). See also, https://opensecrets.org/.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#130

Post by Ekaros »

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #83
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #3

Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.

Many years ago, another division of my employer got caught bribing Nigeria. As a result, a bunch of people who were never in a position to do so had to sit through hours of ethics training. Some of it came with oddly specific examples. Halfway through one such lecture, in which we were being admonished to never accept a car from a customer, some engineer in the back did some quick mental arithmetic on his own salary…

"Hypothetically speaking which customer offered a car?" "And again entirely hypothetically speaking how could one move forward to accept such offer?"
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