American Company Admits Bribery Case In China

[Shuimo]

Why do you think such things could happen in China?
I guess American companies dare not do that in the US!



Lu Kaixin, the communications manager of Avery Dennison Asia Pacific, has admitted to local media that Avery Dennison China had bribed Chinese officials to win big orders from China.
On August 1, 2009, Chinese media reported that a global self-adhesive maker bribed local officials in China to win big orders. Following the report, Avery Dennison issued a statement on August 3 which said that several of its employees in China were involved in suspicious behavior and they had reported these employees' illegal doings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and United States Department of Justice.
According to the information disclosed on the official website of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, since 2004, the Safe Retroreflective Sheeting Department of Avery Dennison China had gained two big orders in China by hiring former staff of the Ministry of Public Security's Transportation Management and Science Research Institute in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. It was said that the two contracts were about installing graphics on a total of 15,400 police cars and worth about USD677,500. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's data shows that Avery Dennison China planned to pay USD41,000 in bribes to Wuxi's Transportation Management and Science Research Institute when it was stopped by Avery Dennison Asia Pacific Company.
So far, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accepted the self-adhesive maker's suggestion of paying a fine of USD200,000 and asked it to not to practice bribery in China or other regions.
Avery Dennison sells reflective material that is often used for printing, road signs and emergency vehicle signs in China via the Safe Retroreflective Sheeting Department; and Wuxi's Transportation Management and Science Research Institute is one of the official organizations in China that are responsible for certifying road products using this material.

http://www.chinacsr.com/en/2009/08/12/5895-american-company-admits-bribery-case-in-china/

[acosta]

american firms are holy better than european firms. what they do is because if they don't, they lose contracts to euro firms...

[Panchito12]

american firms are holy better than european firms. what they do is because if they don't, they lose contracts to euro firms...

Dude, talking out your ass is best left to the Chicom fans and the you-know-who STrOnG!!1111!! crowd.

The USA, under the FDCPA, and the EU, under the auspices of the OECD, have pretty much put a complete stop to the whole bribery thing.

If you don't believe it, ask the boys at SIEMENS and see what happened to them.

[acosta]

Dude, talking out your ass is best left to the Chicom fans and the you-know-who STrOnG!!1111!! crowd.

The USA, under the FDCPA, and the EU, under the auspices of the OECD, have pretty much put a complete stop to the whole bribery thing.

If you don't believe it, ask the boys at SIEMENS and see what happened to them.

i know SIEMENS better than you, and i am even within the loop in bidding a chinese contracts against SIEMENS. and i know how SIEMENS' dirty tricks win the bid just because we american firms are naive, believing the integrity thing, as we were educated from school.



by the way, can you keep your mouth clean? you want everyone earmold? at least chicom looks more educated and cilvilized than you.

[Zarak]

i know SIEMENS better than you, and i am even within the loop in bidding a chinese contracts against SIEMENS. and i know how SIEMENS' dirty tricks win the bid just because we american firms are naive, believing the integrity thing, as we were educated from school.



by the way, can you keep your mouth clean? you want everyone earmold? at least chicom looks more educated and cilvilized than you.

I hope your company's proposals make more sense than your posts.

Is your butt clean? Do you want everyone to have boogers?

[Panchito12]

i know SIEMENS better than you, and i am even within the loop in bidding a chinese contracts against SIEMENS. and i know how SIEMENS' dirty tricks win the bid just because we american firms are naive, believing the integrity thing, as we were educated from school.

Boy, you clearly have no clue how much US businessmen are aware, and fearful, of an FDCPA prosecution. Fool!

It's not about integrity, it's about what happens to twerps like you in the slammer.

[Shuimo]

american firms are holy better than european firms. what they do is because if they don't, they lose contracts to euro firms...

I think then it is unfair to our respectable American corporations, who just take the rap for their sanctimonious hypocritical yet far more wicked European counterparts!

[Panchito12]

Welcome back Shuimo!! Say hello from us to all the Party apparatchiks back in Peking!!

[tea drinker]

No, I'm pretty close to some EU companies, they are very reluctant to to use bribery - some more reluctant than others. But the business reality of many non EU countries dictates you need to find creative ways to achieve the same thing.

I understand some state managed Chinese companies use it regularly though - hence lost bids for EU / US Private companies.

[LineDoggie]

i know SIEMENS better than you, and i am even within the loop in bidding a chinese contracts against SIEMENS. and i know how SIEMENS' dirty tricks win the bid just because we american firms are naive, believing the integrity thing, as we were educated from school.



by the way, can you keep your mouth clean? you want everyone earmold? at least chicom looks more educated and cilvilized than you.Where did you learn English? From the front of a Claymore?

[acosta]

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12814642




The stench of bribery at Siemens signals a wider rot in Europe

WHEN Siemens, Europe’s biggest engineering firm, adopted the slogan “Be inspired” in the mid-1990s, bribery was not what it had in mind. But no one can accuse its managers of lacking inspiration in devising ways to pass generous backhanders to corrupt officials and politicians around the world. On December 15th Siemens pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and corruption and agreed to pay fines of $800m in America and €395m ($540m) in Germany, on top of an earlier €201m.

There is something almost touching about the candour and trust with which Siemens went about a very dirty business. Take the three “cash desks” it set up in its offices, to which employees could bring empty suitcases to be filled with cash. As much as €1m could be withdrawn at a time to win contracts for Siemens’s telecoms-equipment division, according to America’s Department of Justice (DoJ).


Surprisingly, considering their crooked purpose, the cash desks seem to have operated on an honour system. Few questions were asked, no documents were required and managers who asked for money were allowed to approve their own requests. Until 1999 Siemens openly claimed tax deductions for bribes, many of which were listed in its accounts as “useful expenditure”. Between 2001 and 2004 some $67m was merrily carted off in suitcases. “There was no complex financial structuring such as you would find among drug smugglers or money launderers,” says Mark Pieth, chairman of the working group on bribery at the OECD. “People felt confident that they were doing nothing wrong.”

Even when they knew they were doing wrong, they could not break the habit. Illicit payments continued for years after Germany outlawed the bribery of foreign officials in 1999 and after Siemens listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001, which made it subject to America’s tough anti-bribery laws. Instead of counting money in the office, the firm put cash in special accounts, kept off its books, from which nefarious payments could be made. Much of the dirty work was farmed out. As Siemens half-heartedly clamped down on corruption, managers took ever more eccentric steps to avoid getting caught. When authorising payments, many of them signed on removable sticky notes.

The sums are staggering. About $805m was paid to foreign officials to help Siemens win contracts over about six years after the firm’s American listing, according to the DoJ. And the brazenness of the firm’s bribe-paying points to a rotten corporate culture pervasive across Germany at the time. “The great majority of companies operating in the international market were well aware that German law—and the law of most OECD countries—allowed foreign bribery and even subsidised this,” says Peter Eigen, the founder of Transparency International, an anti-corruption group.

That, at least, has changed. Mr Pieth thinks about half of the 30 biggest German and French firms are being investigated or prosecuted for bribing foreign officials. And Germany has steadily improved its rank in Transparency’s “Bribe Payers Index”, moving from ninth-least corrupt in 1999 to fifth in 2008. Yet the Siemens affair also shows how far Europe still lags behind America in prosecuting bribery. Few close to the case think it would have progressed nearly as far had Siemens not invited in Debevoise & Plimpton, a New York law firm, in the hope of winning leniency from American prosecutors. The lawyers pored over its books and interviewed staff in the largest private inquiry of its kind (and, at €204m, probably the costliest too).

Ellen Podgor, an expert in white-collar crime at Stetson University in St Petersburg, Florida, reckons that Siemens confessed all not to minimise the fine it had to pay but to avoid being barred from business with the American government. “The amount of money being paid is not the crucial factor,” she says. “The crucial factor is not being doomed.” If only European prosecutors could inspire such dread.

[Silent Reader]

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12814642


well.. this is what i call self-owned

1. problems with prosecution of bribery does not equal corruption

2. the article you quote mentions the "Bribe Payers Index" - and guess what. the USA is below Germany in this index Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribe_Payers_Index)


Bribe Payers Index (BPI) is a measure of how willing a nation appears to comply with demands for corrupt business practices. The first BPI was published by Transparency International (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_International) on October 26 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_26), 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999).

[tea drinker]

how far Europe still lags behind America in prosecuting bribery.
Prosecuting bribery and it not happening are 2 different things. Fact is these companies will preach all day about standards, but if you get the money in the door they are happy enough. Behind the faceless corporate are real businessmen. You will be hung drawn and quartered if you get caught though.
Because getting caught costs money :)
But it's naive to think bribery doesn't flourish outside our happy little countries. How to tackle it though? If MNC's are reporting their customers for requesting bribes they will soon not have problems with any customers p-)

[Silent Reader]

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12814642


btw

just for you ;)

US company admits Benin bribery (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4310331.stm)

Nigeria: KBR Pleads Guilty in Bribes Case (http://allafrica.com/stories/200902120099.html)

U.S. Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/washington/31contract.html)

Kazakhstan: U.S. Firm Pleads Guilty In Bribery Case (http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1076208.html)

Former Executive of Philadelphia Company Pleads Guilty to Paying Bribes to Vietnamese Officials (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/108508)


just enter "US company bribe" in google.. and these are some of the first hits..... yeah i can clearly see that American corporations are saints :roll:


(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/washington/31contract.html)

[Shuimo]

Welcome back Shuimo!! Say hello from us to all the Party apparatchiks back in Peking!!

It is rare for yu to be this nice!:)
I was expecting you to jump down my throat mad like hell!

Well, the Party apparatchiks don't seem to be doing so well these days!
I guess they don't deserve yr noble regards!

[Shuimo]

No, I'm pretty close to some EU companies, they are very reluctant to to use bribery - some more reluctant than others. But the business reality of many non EU countries dictates you need to find creative ways to achieve the same thing.

I understand some state managed Chinese companies use it regularly though - hence lost bids for EU / US Private companies.

So their creative ways to achive the same thing is to resort to bribery?

I should say it is morally unaccpetable though practically viable!:bash:

You just cannot descend yourslef down to such despicable deeds!

By using bribery for yr ends, you are actully signalling a terribly wrong signal to the bribery takers, who wud only become addictive to such practices once they discover you are actually willing to cooperate with them by their own game rules! It wud create a viscious circle!

You just cann't sacrifice yr moral integrity for dollar profits!:bash: