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

At another big corp the training videos had a scenario where I would be on site with accommodations provided by the client. It asked whether I could accept a cook offered by the client.

I'm infuriated that I'm being offered t-shirts and maybe a lunch and someone else out there is getting a cook for a month. Damn right I'm taking the cook.

So there is a subtle difference. Take a commission for example. Sounds pretty similar to a bribe right? Difference is, bribe makes for a hostage / preferential treatment situation (give me something extra sweet or else no deal/guarantee), whereas a commission is a cut based upon a predetermined price that a salesmen can't really change (e.g. getting a 2% cut for every car you sell at some dealer). Salesmen can negotiate sell price to some extent, affecting their cut, but they can't make demands to the buyer to pay them an extra side deal first (otherwise, if he does, it's a bribe). The buyer, is free to give him an additional tip if he'd like, after the deal is done, but not if it was coerced prior by the seller.

As far as lobbying, there is still the same difference. If a politician said they would promise to personally do X for someone only if given Y dollars, it's a bribe. Instead, if a politician said they would do X if elected, and some random person heard this and liked their cause and so decided to donate them Y dollars, it's not a bribe, because the politician wasn't going to give preferential treatment due to the donation, and the donor wasn't coerced. And it works in reverse. If a donor said there will be extra X money if you do Y personally for me when elected, it's a bribe. See the difference now?

> Without more detail on what exactly Microsoft was extracting out of these circumstances I find the whole thing vague.

I think the big problem here is that you've misunderstood why bribery is a criminal matter. The fact you're talking about Microsoft being "one of the victims in that case" is another sign you do not get it. Corruption itself is the problem, we're not trying to ensure Microsoft gets their $$$.

To root out corruption, the relatively less corrupt major industrialised nations agreed rules forbidding their business entities from having anything to do with such practices even via a third party. When Microsoft realises that their guy in Saudi is involved in something dodgy, their duty isn't "hide it so the big bosses don't know" or even "pay the guy off and find somebody else" but to report this corruption to the government.

These are leaches, they have to be starved, and that won't be effective so long as, like in this story, there are nods and winks and everybody pretends it's fine so long as they got paid.

It's not "resellers" making money, it's apparent that MS' employees and salespeople are using fake contracts and "discounts" to funnel money to decision makers. What MS got out of it at the end of the day — a contract or perhaps some personal earmark for a salesperson — doesn't matter. Their bribes distorted the market, entrenched corruption, and made the lives of people living in these countries worse. It should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

This section in particular is damning,

> In another instance, he saw a contractor for the Saudi interior ministry receive a $13 million discount on its software — but the discount never made it back to the end customer. In another case, Qatar’s ministry of education was paying $9.5 million a year for Office and Windows licenses that were never installed. One way or another, money would end up leaking out of the contracting process, most likely split between the government, the subcontractor, and any Microsoft employees in on the deal.

These "subcontractors" are usually relatives of people in Government, and they're bribing these officials, then splitting money between all of them in exchange for contracts. This is illegal under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The whistleblower wrote a post detailing his accusations here, https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-bribe...

These provide even more color.

> In 2016, a request came through in the amount of $40,000 to accelerate closing a deal in one African country. [...] On top of that, the partner in the deal was underqualified for the project’s outlined scope, and he wasn’t even supposed to be doing business with Microsoft: he had been terminated four months earlier for poor performance on the sales team, and corporate policy prohibits former employees from working as partners for six months from their departure without special approval.

> I brought these issues up with the Microsoft services architect who wrote the request, asking why she didn’t take the work in this case to our very capable in-house team, Microsoft Services. She said our in-house daily rate is very expensive, and she needed a less expensive team to handle the pilot.

and then,

> Meanwhile, the woman’s manager sought me out, angry that I had bypassed him; I told him I was only following company policy. Soon after, he was promoted and became my manager. He immediately scheduled a one-on-one meeting, in which he told me our job is to bring as much revenue as we can to Microsoft. He added, “I don’t want you to be a blocker. If any of the subsidiaries in the Middle East or Africa are doing something, you have to turn your head and leave it as is. If anything happens, they will pay the price, not you.” When I said I would not block anything unless it violated company policy, his tone took a sharp turn. He shouted that I was not capable of doing this business and couldn’t close deals. But my 18-year track record spoke for me.

He escalates, but no one does anything, so he writes to the CEO.

> The aforementioned vice president immediately got back in touch with me, to say that by escalating the matter to Nadella, I had just “booked a one-way ticket out of Microsoft.”

> A general manager told me people panicked when I came to the subsidiary offices, and I had become “one of the most hated persons in Africa.” Only later did I realize this was because I asked too many questions; I was stopping people from skimming money off their deals.

This is a classic culture of corruption. It doesn't get starker than this.

> Examining an audit of several partners conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, I discovered that when agreeing to terms of sale for a product or contract, a Microsoft executive or salesperson would propose a side agreement with the partner and the decision maker at the entity making the purchase. This decision maker on the customer side would send an email to Microsoft requesting a discount, which would be granted, but the end customer would pay the full fee anyway. The amount of the discount would then be distributed among the parties in cahoots: the Microsoft employee(s) involved in the scheme, the partner, and the decision maker at the purchasing entity—often a government official.

Walmart got caught recently doing something very similar, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-102

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-walmart-fcpa/walmart-to-p...

You can see the timeline of FCPA cases here,

https://www.sec.gov/enforce/sec-enforcement-actions-fcpa-cas...