Who is harmed by bribery

Under French law, victims who have been harmed, including states, may apply to become a civil party to criminal proceedings.

The Global Forum for Asset Recovery has established principles for safely returning proceeds of corruption to the country of origin. These enshrine transparency, accountability, the use of funds for the benefit of people of the nations harmed and inclusion of civil society, and should guide all such processes. In the two most recent cases, the governments of Thailand and Haiti were compensated in and respectively. In both cases, the court ruled the governments were directly harmed by a criminal conspiracy to bribe government officials.

This would be a disaster. Rather than watering down this essential legislation, the government should expand the law to not only cover businesses who give bribes but also the foreign officials who request them. Until then, governments should step up their coordination to ensure that the victims of corruption are compensated and restituted, and that the perpetrators face the consequences they deserve.

Since countries like Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia and Sri Lanka did not benefit from the recent Airbus settlement, they should be free to take action against the company, not just their own public officials.

For any press inquiries please contact press transparency. We surveyed 3, businesspeople in 30 countries about corruption. Our interactive tool reveals the results. The globalisation of world trade and finance has been accompanied by an internationalisation of corruption. The last year has again shown that no country is immune from corruption. To test the hypothesis, Serafeim evaluated data from the forensic services practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers , which provides global consulting services to companies dealing with potential legal issues.

The firm annually surveys thousands of its clients about their respective issues. Serafeim focused on survey answers from through , during which some 10 percent of respondents about respondents anonymously reported that their firm had experienced a bribery incident. Many of the survey takers who had dealt with corruption worked for firms based in countries infamous for rampant bribery, including Russia, Ukraine, and South Africa. But there were also on-the-take reports from firms based in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where bribery is less common but still existent.

The idea that bribery doesn't exist in the developed world is a myth. The survey included both hypothetical and reactive questions, asking respondents how they believed the detection of bribery would affect the firm and—in cases where it had actually happened—how bribery really did affect the firm.

It turned out that speculation did not match the reality. Respondents guessed that their firm's reputation would be most negatively affected by bribery, followed in speculated impact by business relations, employee morale, and relations with regulators.

But respondents who had actually dealt with the problem reported that employee morale was by far more significantly affected by bribery than any other factor. That's important because studies have shown that employee morale is directly related to a firm's performance, including stock market returns.

For instance, the consultancy Sirota recently surveyed High-morale companies those at which more than 75 percent of the workforce reported "overall satisfaction with their company" had significantly stronger year-over-year stock performance than companies with lower morale reports. These high-morale companies averaged a Serafeim's findings also indicate that bribery could hurt a firm even if no one outside the organization ever found out about it.

While the amount may differ — whether R or R1 million — the nature of the action is not different. It all amounts to bribery and corruption. Rather, at the level of the bribe to a traffic official, it can be seen as an avoidance strategy. This could be merely to avoid a fine or, worse, to avoid being jailed for drunken driving. For tenders, there does not appear to be any other motivation than the money. So, someone avoids a fine and someone else gets rich.

Is that really so bad? The costs and consequences of bribery and corruption answer that question best.