I used to work for one of the oil giants. They had codified standards for bribery, a la: "While we do not approve of bribery, we recognize that in some places we do business, they are an unfortunate necessity. To that end, we have standardized our practices to keep everyone involved as safe as possible".
I hope there standard was to not do it, because it is a US crime for any US national, citizen or resident as employee, officer or agent of a US corporation to bribe or otherwise corrupt a foreign official.
One common exception is the so called grease payments which you’ll need to get anything done in any reasonable time frame.
> Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is that grease payments or facilitation payments are made to an official to expedite his performance of the routine duties he is already bound to perform.
I have worked for a non-US company that was owned by a US company. I had to go through training and one of the courses was about bribery.
It was an absurd experience. The training material kept repeating that I absolutely could not bribe a non-US official. However, in my country ALL officials are non-US and bribery is also illegal so what were they trying to tell me with this "non-US" criterion?
The message I got from training course is that bribery is bad (I knew that), bribery is illegal (I knew that) but it's okay if I bribe a US official (really?).
My understanding is there is an exception for bribes needed to get an otherwise typical process complete. In other words, you’re entitled to some permit, but without a bribe you’d never get it or not get it in a reasonable period of time.
Such a payment is considered a grease payment (and not a bribe), which is lawful under FCPA.
It is likewise illegal for Australian citizens, residents or corporations (with the same sort of "Facilitation Payment" carve-outs mentioned elsethread):
It’s funny - I did give that some thought - and then concluded (VERY INCORRECTLY I ADD), well he worked for one of the BIG oil companies — more likely than not an American.
Upon giving it a little more thought it turns out that only 2 of the top 10 oil companies are American. So, yeah, my bad.
