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Sun Microsystems May Have Violated Bribery Law

Posted by Soulskill on from the my-friend-abraham-lincoln-asks-you-to-look-the-other-way dept.

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."

4 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Since most people don't RTFA by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    Dual Opteron < $600
    1. Re:Since most people don't RTFA by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

      Can someone tell me what's wrong with Slashdot's front page? I want my low-bandwidth, dialup-friendly version back but despite changing my preference multiple times, I'm getting some frakked-up yellow-and-white monstrosity.

      you have to bribe someone to get what you want

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      rewriting history since 2109
    2. Re:Since most people don't RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      They DO care about foreign corruption. Thats money that could have been paid to US government officials.

  2. Re:In many countries, no bribery = no business by toppavak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And that attitude, especially among instructors (I've spoken to several business school faculty espousing this view before), prevents this from ever changing. At some point one has to make a decision about what ideals are worth holding on to. Having spent a lot of time in a country where corruption at every level is rampant (India) and seeing many successful businesses run cleanly, I don't believe your equation is entirely accurate. It is a decision on our part as individuals as to whether we want to actively propagate corruption in developing countries or not. To preach ethical practices in business, engineering and science and yet consider those practices to be naive is nothing short of ludicrous.

    With the amount of harm it does to developing economies and the people that live there, doing business this way should be treated as a crime against humanity. It retards the progression of democracy and social justice abroad and creates future demand for corruption. Just because this was the way an older generation operated doesn't mean the new generations of leaders coming out of colleges now have to continue their mistakes. It all starts with the realization that one person can actually change the world- for good or for bad. The question you have to ask yourself is simple: which way do you want to change it?