LogFAQs > #933098202

red sox 777 posted...

So while this definitely looks super sketchy, it's not quite as bad as it sounds. In a lot of countries, bribery is effectively required as a condition of doing business. Try doing business in China or Russia or somewhere like that without paying bribes to government officials - the government will shut down your business or investigate you on trumped up charges until you pay up or give up.

If American companies are not allowed to pay the bribes required to do business in these countries, they essentially cannot do business there. Of course that makes American companies less competitive on the world stage compared with companies based in other countries that are allowed to pay bribes.

Morally, is there any difference between paying bribes to corrupt Russian officials and paying taxes to the Russian government which the government can then pay to the corrupt officials as salary? No, right? But under the FCPA it's treated as different under US law.

Not being able to do business with American companies is the type of large financial pressure that might be able to chip away at that "standard business practice"

Pretty similar to how China can easily crack down on individual companies willing to censor speech for them (e.g. Blizzard), but it would hurt them a lot if all American businesses just stopped operating there unless they could do so on their terms.

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