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Sun Microsystems May Have Violated Bribery Law
Afforess writes "In a new file submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sun Microsystems admitted that 'we have identified potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the resolution of which could possibly have a material effect on our business.' The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it 'unlawful to make a payment to a foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person.' Yet, Sun would not release further details, only that it 'took remedial action.' Oracle, the new owner of Sun Microsystems, also said that they had prior knowledge of the infraction, yet also refused to release any details."
For those of you that won't RTFA, this may not be a big deal and is fairly common.
For example, in 2007, networking provider Alcatel-Lucent agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle charges that Lucent Technologies, before it was bought by Alcatel SA in 2006, illegally paid for hundreds of trips for Chinese officials to win contracts. In a separate case, IBM Corp. agreed in 2000 to pay $300,000 to settle allegations that its Argentina subsidiary was involved in bribing officials of a government-owned bank to win a contract to upgrade the bank's computer systems.
Dual Opteron < $600
In my home state there are laws against bribery and corruption of course. One of them pertains to gifts. Included in the banned gifts are food. The rule is that you cannot accept food (usually cookies) from anyone unless you eat it in front of them.
Now that last bit sounds odd, doesn't it. Obviously, the rules do allow you to accept a gift of food if you eat in front of them. So, in practice, this means that if you accept cookies for going the extra mile for somebody, you are CORRUPT and UNETHICAL!!! If, on the other hand, you are a politician and getting bought dinner by a lobbyist, you are a force for righteousness.
Apparently.
For those of you who are interested and have not already seen it, the Foreign Corrupt Practices act and international bribery by large corporations and wealthy individuals was covered in the "Black Money" episode on Frontline. Obviously the Sun case, coming to light more recently and being much smaller than the frauds discussed in the documentary, is not mentioned, but the Sun case is just another smaller instance of a much larger problem.
Universal nut shellers in Uganda. I worked with an NGO to create a self-sustaining social enterprise that manufactures and sells nut shellers (at profit) to peanut growers in the country. We never gave a single bribe (we couldn't afford to even if we needed to!). Its hard, yes, but its not impossible.