Hewlett-Packard Admits To International Bribery and Money Laundering Schemes

First time accepted submitter CP (1315157) writes "Hewlett-Packard has admitted to [bribery and money laundering] in order to profiteer off of lucrative government contracts in Russia, Poland, and Mexico, according to court documents. HP's guilty plea carries with it a $108 million penalty — a combination of SEC penalties, as well as criminal fines and forfeitures paid out to the Department of Justice. Thus far no criminal charges have been brought against American HP executives. The multi-agency investigation, which was conducted by multi-national law enforcement partners, the FBI, IRS, and SEC, has revealed kleptocracies in the three foreign governments and corruption and dishonesty among HP corporate fat cats."

Comments

Corporations are not people

[msobkow]

Corporations are not people. They don't make decisions. Executives make decisions.

Lock the bastards up.

Re:Corporations are not people

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree,

It wasn't the shareholders that did the bribing. Yet they're the ones that are going to be penalized. Everyone with a401(k) is essentially bribing the US government with the settlement to keep these executives from going to jail.

Re:Corporations are not people

[MathFox]

Executives make decisions.
Lock the bastards up.

Most likely one of the conditions of the settlement is that the executives are not prosecuted for their transgressions.

And the executives will have the fine paid from the corporate funds... business as usual.

Re:Corporations are not people

[BurfCurse]

Most of this happened longer than 5 years ago under different leadership. HP is still suffering from the mistakes of the past. HP was financially successful then but at a cost. This is the way people like Mark Hurd do business. Its all about short term gains. Being told your pay was being cut because of difficult times and it was necessary in order to survive, only to find out that 6 months later HP had record profits. That's why all the top performer's no longer work there.

Re:Corporations are not people

[serviscope_minor]

Really.

Has there ever been a single documented case in the whole of history where the shareholders have ever successfully (or even unsuccessfully, for that matter) sued a company because the company wasn't doing enougl illegal stuff to bolster profits?

Re:Corporations are not people

[meta-monkey]

Then find the people responsible for the laundering and bribery five years ago and put them in jail.

Never happens, though. Two-tiered justice system. If you're rich, you get fined instead of going to jail. Just gotta make sure the government gets its beak wet. If you're poor, lock 'em up and throw away the key.

Re:Corporations are not people

[doggo]

And this is the problem, isn't it? Corporations shield corporate officers from criminal prosecution. The is the reform that needs to happen in the U.S., and the world.

Criminal acts perpetrated by corporate agents need to be prosecuted. The agents, and their managers, up to the top level held responsible and subject to the criminal penalties.

Or, at the very least, if we're going to continue to wrong-headed assertion that "corporations are people", then corporations need to be held accountable. If the "corporation" commits a crime that a human would be sentenced to a prison term for, that corporation should be stopped from doing business for the time of the sentence. No production. No trade. No accounts receivable/payable activity allowed. Dead stop.

Corporate acts that result in human deaths, means the corporation gets the equivalent sentencing, whatever the normal human sentence is.

$108 million penalty

[MickyTheIdiot]

That equates out to like a $5 fine for those outside of the corporate bubble...

Re:$108 million penalty

[Joce640k]

Even inside the corporate bubble it's actually less than what a teenager could get for sharing a few music files with his friends.

Re:$108 million penalty

[Sockatume]

HP's annual revenue is on the order of $100Bn, so $108m is about 0.1% of their income. The median US household income is about $40,000, so this would be equivalent to you receiving a $40 fine.

For international bribery and money laundering.

No subject.

[Himmy32]

"Hewlett-Packard has admitted to in order to profiteer off of lucrative government contracts in Russia, Poland, and Mexico, according to court documents.

It's cool if you want to take part of the story for the summary, but you dropped out an important part.

The Original:
Hewlett-Packard has admitted to creating and using slush funds for bribes, money laundering, and clandestine “bag of cash” handoffs in order to profiteer off of lucrative government contracts in Russia, Poland, and Mexico, according to court documents.

this shit is infuriating

[Connie_Lingus]

to someone who lives, on a a daily basis, with the discrimination and stigma of being a convicted felon for minor drug offenses, these kind of articles piss me off to no end.

these corporate douchebags can blatantly break federal, state, and international laws and not even lose their jobs, where people like me who got caught with some recreational substance see their entire careers and life go into the toilet.

fuck those HP crooks, AND the DOJ they rode in on.

US equivalent of Bribery Act

[benjfowler]

In the UK, we have a particularly strict law called the Bribery Act 2010, which is good, because it not only prohibits giving and receiving bribes to win business, but it also prohibits failing to prevent it.

Does America have anything even close? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if they don't, because the US rent-seeker corporate Right would fight it tooth and nail.

Re:In most of the world...

[benjfowler]

Doesn't mean that all cultures are equivalent. I certainly wouldn't want my culture being considered equivalent to (say) the Dayak head-hunters, Nazi Germany or the Af-Pak tribal belt.