Amazon is Investigating Whether Its Lawyers Bribed Government Officials in India (techcrunch.com) 57
Amazon has launched an investigation into the conduct of its legal representatives in India following a complaint from a whistleblower who alleged that one or more of the company's reps had bribed government officials, Indian news and analysis outlet the Morning Context reported on Monday. From a report: The company is investigating whether legal fees financed by it was used for bribing government officials, the report said, which cited unnamed sources and didn't identify the government officials. Amazon has placed Rahul Sundaram, a senior corporate counsel, on leave, the report added. In a statement to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said the company has "zero tolerance" for corruption, but didn't comment on the investigation.
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Replying to yourself again? Pitiful.
Bribery Law In India (Score:5, Interesting)
This might explain why Amazon are conducting a review of their own conduct, rather than simply complying with an investigation by the Indian Government.
Of course, if Amazon do find conduct that would be illegal say in the US but isn’t prohibited by statute in India, what are they going to do?
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Re: Bribery Law In India (Score:3)
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The intent of the law is compliance.
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Many jurisdictions enforce have bribery laws for their citizens and companies that apply to acts outside of their borders. I'm quite sure the US is one of the jurisdictions. As an example, Canada's anti-corruption laws apply to Canadians, Canadian Company's, or even foreign companies that conduct business in Canada. Acts of bribery committed outside Canada are treated just as if they were committed on Canadian soil.
So there is a lot that can be done to Amazon, which is why they have a zero tolerance polic
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And yet Halliburton still operates in Canada, in spite of being convicted in France of bribing Nigerian officials to the tune of $180 million while Cheny was CEO.
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Whether this applies to Amazon's business and industry, I don't know. But your comment seems to lack this knowlege.
We, the USA, spent hundreds of years trying to get each individual to treat every other individual as
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What is ironic is that bribing a government official is considered protected speech in the US, as per the Citizens United verdict. The US is the only country in the world where overt bribery is 100% legal.
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The Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Review: India [thelawreviews.co.uk]
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Of course, if Amazon do find conduct that would be illegal say in the US but isn’t prohibited by statute in India, what are they going to do?
Doesn't matter. It would still be illegal as per US law, and somebody will have to make time in an orange jumpsuit. I'm very sarcastic when it comes to the law and the power of money, but this is one area where the US is really aggressive whenever it can make a case.
Reputable corporations (or those that know well the stakes) take a lot of effort to avoid anything that can be construed as bribing foreign officials. That's just playing with ricin.
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The best thing to do would be to target the officials who accepted the bribes with drone strikes....
In India, you can't actually get any kind of goverment permit, form, etc without bribing someone in the Indian goverment. Its been that way for decades and is unlikely to stop any time soon.
excessive gov't power is the source of corruption (Score:1)
excessive gov't power is the source of corruption
something to keep in mind as many of us wish for a larger gov't to solve our problems; let's find cures for society's ills that aren't worse than the problems themselves
and besides, if the the gov't officials aren't named and/or indicted (as suggested by article), then in fact it's all theater
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There are those of us old enough to remember what it was like before "larger government". We remember the Cuyahoga River burning on national television, Thalidomide children, and mercury contamination of fish. We remember London's 'killer fogs' and smog over LA so heavy that visibility was limited to a couple of blocks, rivers turning weird colors downstream from mine tailings, Love Canal, and the Ford Pinto. 1/3 of my second grade class was out sick because of bad meat from the Chicago stockyards, polio
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way to totally either miss point or be intentionally obstuse
the key word to my whole post was 'excessive'
none of your tales of woe are social issues, which is a specific example of gov't intruding on things it is least good for
there are in fact, things that gov't is perfect for, like some of your snarky examples, which prove my point that we're currently far from the best balance of gov't power vs individual power
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Killer fogs aren't a social issue? In what society? Libertardia?
Do you not consider bribery a 'social issue'? Why not? It has a deleterious effect on the entire society, if you don't believe me just live in Peru or India for a while and see what effect it has on the entire population and economy. What then qualifies as "a specific example of gov't intruding on things it is least good for"?
Multi-national business ethics is hard (Score:2)
In business corruption and crossing the ethical line is very easy. A countries laws, how they are inforced and any overriding society norms are the only safeguards we got.
When dealing with a different country what is illegal in the US, may be common practice in a different country. If you don't follow the common practice, you may not be able to get business done.
For example.
A business is working with a country where bribes are expected. The best bribe wins the contract. The business knows it cannot actua
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TIPS (Which is an acronym of "To Insure Prompt Service."
This is utter bullshit and always has been. It is some nonsense garbage someone made up somewhere along the line, probably a restaurant manager. It falls flat on its face when you know that "insure" is not the correct word in this context. Please think things through.
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You don't think all those places don't have a clue when the good / bad shifts happen? You think they're going to risk paying anyone who might not hit the minimum? No way, and in the case of chains, they've got it down to a freaking science. My friend Missy used to work for a couple of them while in college. She did not make big bucks despite being a cool / efficient server. They cycled people around so that nobody fell below minimum, and ensured they ha
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Ah, but if you give me bad service, I won't tip you. If you give everyone bad service they won't either and you'll make $2.13/hour and your boss will have to pay you an addition $5.12/hour to make up for your bad performance, and then she'll fire you. Its a self-correcting problem, if after you're fired, you euthanize yourself.
Investigating... (Score:2)
Because we can't be sure, we know we hired shady people.
Zero tolerance? Bullshit (Score:3)
Everybody knows that in some countries there is no choice, you have to pay bribes in order to do business. What Amazon does not like is getting caught and exposed.
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No, they really do have a zero tolerance policy (I work at Amazon, although nothing to do with this). Whatever law firm they contracted will never get another cent of Amazon business and very likely any pending bills will be delayed for a very long time while they are scrutinized and as many as possible denied. I'm sure the firm figured that just relying on their normal business practices was the easy way to go, but that was **NOT** what was expected by their customer. We've experienced repeated delays i
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I don't believe that for a moment. Far more likely a risk analysis for that China DC showed that there was an unacceptably high risk of getting caught and that was why officials did not get paid off.
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I worked in the AWS SOC at the time, we really did prevent the Chinese officials from entering even though nothing was in production yet. We were getting 'dawn raids' every month for a year, and since we did not allow access they refused to sign off on our occupancy permits. Can't remember the site name now, it was on the edge of the Gobi Desert and was going to be fed by their (then new) solar panel fields. The demands for bribes were clear and unequivocal, the security managers repeatedly queried highe
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Forgot to mention that this was never an issue at the Beijing or Shanghai sites, which is why management was unprepared for these demands at the new site.
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It's easy to be cynical, but sometimes big corporations don't do evil things... because it means they'd be fined quite heavily if they did ;-)
No. They get heavily fined if they get _caught_. Competent enterprises do a risk analysis here and will not use bribes if the risk of getting caught outweighs the benefits of using bribes. Of course, all these cases then get used by PR to push the fantasy that a large for-profit organization actually has morals. But if they understand the situation and are sure the risk of getting caught is negligible, they will all pay bribes. They will just never admit that.
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I thought that's how India worked? (Score:2)
Application fees (Score:1)
Woudln't application fees to process applications, such as a college/business contract review/etc.. be bribery?
Example: Government wants to build jets. Boeing, LockHeed, etc.. all submit contracts, and are having to pay application fees to enter bid (let's say, it's an 'Open fee" to review documents.) wouldn't this be a bribe? Just because it's called a fee, doesn't mean they aren't paying for the priviledge to be in the front-runner for the contract.
I think even our own government does this, and I highly
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Woudln't application fees to process applications, such as a college/business contract review/etc.. be bribery?
No.
Example: Government wants to build jets. Boeing, LockHeed, etc.. all submit contracts, and are having to pay application fees to enter bid (let's say, it's an 'Open fee" to review documents.) wouldn't this be a bribe? Just because it's called a fee, doesn't mean they aren't paying for the priviledge to be in the front-runner for the contract.
Counter example: would you believe I had to bribe the county in order to drive my car? They called it a "registration fee" but its really just a bribe.
My counter-example is, obviously, off in conspiracy theory land.
There is a difference between "fees that are required and collected by the government/institution" and "monies paid to a government/institutional official that will be kept by him and/or disbursed to others." The latter is a bribe.
Yes, the answer is Yes. (Score:3)
In India, when the question is "Did large company bribe government official?" The answer is always YES.
Otherwise, that large company would not be profitable in India. They most likely would not be allowed to operate.
The real problem is that they do not pay government officials enough money in India. Bribery is both common and often not illegal.
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Confused (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
In places like India, it is probably impossible to do business at all without bribing people. You have to adapt to the local culture.
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No, you don't. When my wife and I got married in Peru we decided that we were not going to pay a single bribe to anyone. For the civil wedding we needed 13 documents, for the church wedding we needed 3 more (and a letter from my mother, signed by her priest, that I had never been married or divorced in the US). The process took three times longer than it would have otherwise, but it got done.
Re: So? (Score:3)
Ya that's the right way.
A majority of listed cos / MNCs no longer pay bribes in India and even if the process takes 2-3x as long they stick to it. Or even if we don't get the contract there's no bribery option. At least in last 6-7 years this has evolved.
Employees are the most pissed because having the option to bribe was so much more comfortable for us. Those days we would have a guy in every state usually called some sort of "coordinator" who would immediately arrange the bribes (if you had mgmt
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Thanks for that very enlightening post, lot of good information. I'm hoping that Peru undergoes the same change over the next few years, as the corruption there is out of hand and it's really annoying the public and hurting the economy. I'm retiring soon and we'll be spending half of the year there, I'm not looking forward to having to pay a "fine" for every cop we pass on the road between Cusco and Paruro.
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I happen to have friends in Peru. They gave up on similar endeavors and just paid the bribes. They judged that it would take years and years otherwise.
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Almost four months for us, but this was in 1988 and the situation is much worse now.
In many countries (Score:2)
It's more of a matter of degree, than whether it happened or not. Certain type of bribery are standard business practice in some parts of the world. However, there are still lines that should not be crossed. This probably means that some Amazon employee in India got out of control.
Do the necessary (Score:2)
So many unsavory acts are covered by the innocent-sounding phrase "do the necessary".
Bribeocracy (Score:2)
Many newly industrialized countries outright function by bribes. The gov't workers often are paid crappy such that they rely on bribes to get by. Nobody wants to pay for real wages ("taxes, booo!") and so bribery is the de-facto replacement.
If American companies are not allowed to bribe but local ones are, then they are at an unfair advantage.
US also has a Bribeocracy, it's called Congress, but works at a larger level. The SCOTUS pretty much considers bribery to be "free speech", and money talks.
It is the same article all the way down. (Score:2)
Did the sun come up in India today? (Score:2)
Asking whether anyone doing business in India has bribed government officials there is like asking whether the sun rose today. Not much investigation is required.
Indians among most corrupt while doing business (Score:2)
Indians among most corrupt while doing business abroad https://archive.is/ppsJF [archive.is]