231–240 of 409 posts
Fridays are the days most interesting news lands because it’s easiest to sweep it under the rug with the weekend. I wish news organizations where more courageous and held on to this stuff to Monday/Tuesday.
Unfortunately, we are left with the problem that it can be very hard to tell the difference between a bribe and a grease payment. The latter are an unfortunate reality that companies can't realistically function without--and not just in the third world.
Ohh man my ESG ETF is suddenly evil..
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While in India once, I ran into a friend from Google who was out there trying to build a data center. Total coincidence that we were both there at the same time. I was there to hire and train for another company and he was there to break ground. He'd been there for week and they'd yet to start doing more than some bare minimums related to surveys and permits. I was surprised that he was there at all, given the curren…
I'm somewhat confused. Here in America when you want to accomplish something like open a new facility you basically force the potential municipalities into competing with each other to win your favor. A big company will go to all the Chambers of Commerce in a given area and basically say "we're considering opening a 100,000 Sq ft facility and hiring 300 people. What incentives can you offer me if I build it here?" Th…
Bribes in India are so common, they made a website: https://ipaidabribe.com/
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act should be repealed and American companies should be allowed to compete on equal footing with their foreign competitors. No other country, even if it technically has an FCPA-like law on the books, actually enforces it to the extent the US does. It means that everyone is free to openly participate in bribery to win foreign markets, markets where bribery is just how business is done, wh…
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It's well known that Microsoft has been giving bribes even to small companies for many decades. The entity of the bribes from MS are above average.
Is it considered a "bribe" if it's a transaction between private companies? I would think that's just considered a "discount" at that point. Not saying it's right, I'm just saying that I thought there might be a legal distinction.
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.
Are you saying we should discount all whistleblowers because it doesn’t fit some preset narrative?
Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.
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The irony is the bribes are, of course, a requirement to operate in the US as a large corporation, but here they’re laundered as “lobbying” and “campaign donations.”
It’s really not the same thing. Bribery undermines the rule of law. Lobbying helps form it. The difference may seem subtle but it isn’t. If you believe US lawmakers are taking bribes please provide evidence because that is a Big Deal. If you believe lobbying is harmful to our democratic processes please present that argument directly.