Bribery Charges Research Articles

“We Have Been Thrown Under the Bus”: Corporate Versus Individual Defense Mechanisms Against Transnational Corporate Bribery Charges

The telecommunication company Telia’s dealings in Uzbekistan have resulted in bribery accusations both in Sweden and in abroad. The article analyzes the defense mechanisms produced by both the corporation and the prosecuted former executives of the company. Telia’s initially denial eventually changed into a partial acknowledgment in combination with a scapegoating discourse. While Telia hardly defended itself at all in the Swedish court, the company’s former executives employed a defense of legality, denial of knowledge, of deviance, and of responsibility as well as a claim of being scapegoated. We discuss these developments in the light of the transformation of the Telia case from a mediated corporate scandal to a criminal court case and from a focus on organizational to individual responsibility.

Discussions about the Criteria of Distinction between Third Party Bribery Charges (Article 130 of Criminal Law) and Simple Bribery Charges (Article 129, Clause 1 of Criminal Law) - With a focus on the Supreme Court Ruling of 2016Do3540 on June 23, 2016 -

Discussions about the Criteria of Distinction between Third Party Bribery Charges (Article 130 of Criminal Law) and Simple Bribery Charges (Article 129, Clause 1 of Criminal Law) - With a focus on the Supreme Court Ruling of 2016Do3540 on June 23, 2016 -

Agency Cost and Uncontrollable Risks in Hiding Fortune Overseas—Offshore Companies, Ownership of the Cannes Villa and Money Laundering in the Criminal Case of Bo Xilai

The Jinan Intermediate People’s Court adjudicated the charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power against Mr. Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party Chief of Chongqing from August 22 to 26, 2013. Bo was charged of accepting a luxury villa located in Cannes from a tycoon named Xu Ming. A conspiracy named the Montage scheme, which used offshore companies in the purpose of committing bribery and covering the beneficiary of the property abroad, emerged during the trial. With focus on the role of the offshore companies played in financing function, fake business transactions, ownership structure related to the Cannes villa, this paper is trying to answer a couple of questions: what’s the time of accepting cash bribe paralleling with money laundering through a group of offshore companies, the time when the money was firstly transferred from the bribe-giver to the bribe-taker or the time when the bribe-taker became the beneficiary or controller of the assets purchased with the money? In finding out the beneficiary of a property under the name of an offshore company, is it legally required and technically possible to prove the consistence between the owner of a property and that of an offshore company?

Agency Cost and Uncontrollable Risks in Hiding Fortune Overseas Offshore Companies, Ownership of the Cannes Villa and Money Laundering in the Criminal Case of Bo Xilai

The Jinan Intermediate People’s Court adjudicated the charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power against Mr. Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party Chief of Chongqing from August 22 to 26, 2013. Unprecedentedly, the transcripts of court records were posted on Weibo (China’s equivalent to Twitter) hourly, attracting nationally wide attention. Bo was charged of accepting a luxury villa located in Cannes from a tycoon named Xu Ming. A conspiracy named the Montage scheme, which used offshore companies in the purpose of committing bribery and covering the beneficiary of the property abroad, emerged during the trial. With focus on the role of the offshore companies played in financing function, fake business transactions, ownership structure related to the Cannes villa, this paper is trying to answer a couple of questions: what’s the time of accepting cash bribe paralleling with money laundering through a group of offshore companies, the time when the money was firstly transferred from the bribe-giver to the bribe-taker or the time when the bribe-taker became the beneficiary or controller of the assets purchased with the money? In finding out the beneficiary of a property under the name of an offshore company, is it legally required and technically possible to prove the consistence between the owner of a property and that of an offshore company?

The Gülen Movement in Turkey: The Politics of Islam, Science and Modernity

The Gülen Movement in Turkey: The Politics of Islam, Science and Modernity

Teva to pay record fine over bribery charges

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries agreed to pay $519 million to settle U.S. criminal and civil allegations that it paid bribes to government officials in Russia, Ukraine, and Mexico between 2002 and 2012 to secure business for its medications. The Israel-based company, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs, will pay the biggest criminal fine ever imposed by the U.S. government against a pharmaceutical company for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The law, jointly enforced by the Justice Department and the Securities & Exchange Commission, prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business. Teva allegedly made more than $214 million in illicit profits by bribing officials to increase its market share, obtain regulatory approvals, and gain favorable drug purchase and prescription decisions, according to the federal government. The improper conduct did not involve U.S. sales. “While the conduct that resulted in this

D’un droit défensif à un droit coopératif : la nécessaire réforme de notre justice pénale des affaires

L’année 2014 a été marquée par deux affaires dans lesquelles de grandes entreprises françaises ont eu à verser des sommes conséquentes au ministère américain de la Justice (DOJ) au titre d’amendes transactionnelles. Les deux grandes entreprises françaises ont peut-être payé pour leurs fautes mais aussi ‒ voire surtout ‒ pour leur mauvaise compréhension d’une nouvelle règle du jeu du « business mondial ». Ces deux affaires illustrent l’apparition d’un nouveau paradigme en droit des affaires, largement inspiré par la culture du droit américain, qu’il est urgent de saisir pour adapter notre droit. Cet enjeu est devenu crucial pour la protection de nos entreprises à l’heure du droit global. Il l’est d’autant plus que le nouveau modèle en construction est en perpétuelle mutation et qu’il est nécessaire de s’adapter rapidement. À cette fin, il convient de détailler les enseignements de ces affaires, non seulement en vue de transformer notre système de justice mais, plus profondément encore, notre culture, et de la mettre ainsi au diapason de notre temps.

Bend it Like FIFA: Corruption On and Off the Pitch

Throughout 2015, many of FIFA’s (Federation Internationale de Football Association) top executives were arrested, facing charges of bribery, fraud, and money laundering. On December 21, 2015, FIFA’s own Ethics Committee decided to ban its long-serving president, Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, for eight years. FIFA has long been plagued by allegations of bribery, but has, until recently, been able to get around them, like a well-curved free-kick shot. Being organized as a not-for-profit organization while generating large revenues, FIFA has enjoyed the services of highly paid executives and employees. For-profit firms are regulated largely through the market process, with stockholders having strong incentives to maintain close oversight and demanding transparency of transactions, and being subject to takeover bids. Not-for-profit organizations receive far less oversight, but are subject to regulation from both the country where they are incorporated and the country where they operate. As a monopolist in rule-making and holding a world championship tournament for the world’s most popular sport, FIFA executives and board members are in a position to demand payoffs and/or can punish its adversaries with its venue selection or by banning national teams from tournament participation.

Edmund G. Ross: Soldier, Senator, Abolitionist by Richard A. Ruddy (review)

Reviewed by: Edmund G. Ross: Soldier, Senator, Abolitionist by Richard A. Ruddy Jerry Thompson Edmund G. Ross: Soldier, Senator, Abolitionist. By Richard A. Ruddy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. ix + 328 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 paper. When Americans think of Edmund Gibson Ross, if they think of him at all, they remember him as the junior senator from Kansas who cast the decisive vote of “not guilty” in the gut-wrenching trial of the impeached President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Ross is also recalled as one of the senators featured in the 1956 Pulitzer Prize–winning, error-riddled Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen. Or Americans may think of Bradford Dillman’s able portrayal of the brave young senator in the 1965 tv series based on the Kennedy and Sorensen book. A leading abolitionist, Ross was in the forefront of the “holy war” for “Bloody Kansas,” arriving in the territory shortly after the proslavery sacking of Lawrence in 1856. To help promote the free-state cause, the Ohio-born Edmund and his brother William purchased the Topeka-based Kansas Tribune and editorialized against the proslavery Lecompton Constitution. With the coming of civil war, Ross became a captain in the Eleventh Kansas Infantry. After the suicide of James H. Lane in 1866, Ross was appointed and then elected to the United States Senate. Largely as a result of his vote to acquit President Johnson, Ross was vilified with trumped-up charges of bribery, and he lost reelection in 1870. Fifteen years later, he was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to serve as governor of New Mexico Territory. In his research on Ross’s Civil War career, Ruddy does not appear to have consulted Ross’s Compiled Service Record, or even the invaluable 128-volume Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Ruddy seems most comfortable when writing about Ross’s time as territorial governor, especially his struggles with the Santa Fe Ring, an infamous alliance of politicians, lawyers, and businessmen. Unlike his predecessors, Ross devoted considerable time and effort to his work as governor, often laboring well past midnight. Ross later worked as editor of the Deming Headlight, where he spoke out against statehood on the grounds that the legislature would be in the hands of scoundrels and the people would be victims of an “incompetent and venal judiciary” (169). Ross returned to Santa Fe in 1895 as secretary of the Bureau of Immigration and managed to write a less than objective history of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. With his eyesight and hearing failing, Ross spent the last few years of his life in Albuquerque, where he died of pneumonia in 1907. A commercial photography specialist by profession, Ruddy spent six-years studying the life of the overlooked Ross. The result is a first-rate, balanced biography of a gallant and admirable individual. Anyone interested in the history of Civil War and Reconstruction, or the history of New Mexico or Kansas, will want this well-crafted, indispensable, and definitive biography of the intrepid Ross. [End Page 392] Jerry Thompson Department of Humanities Texas A&M International University Copyright © 2015 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Device Maker Settles Criminal Bribery Charges

Biomedical Safety & Standards 45(1):p 1-3, January 15, 2015. | DOI: 10.1097/01.BMSAS.0000459652.73171.99

Heating Up a Case Gone Cold: Revisiting the Charges of Bribery and Official Misconduct Made against Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier in 1854-55

Journal of Supreme Court HistoryVolume 38, Issue 1 p. 1-19 Article Heating Up a Case Gone Cold: Revisiting the Charges of Bribery and Official Misconduct Made against Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier in 1854–55 DANIEL J. WISNIEWSKI, DANIEL J. WISNIEWSKI daniel.j.wisniewski@gmail.com 14520 Avion Parkway, Suite 210, Chantilly, Virginia 20151Search for more papers by this author DANIEL J. WISNIEWSKI, DANIEL J. WISNIEWSKI daniel.j.wisniewski@gmail.com 14520 Avion Parkway, Suite 210, Chantilly, Virginia 20151Search for more papers by this author First published: 26 March 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5818.2013.12001.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume38, Issue1March 2013Pages 1-19 RelatedInformation

Heating Up a Case Gone Cold: Revisiting the Charges of Bribery and Official Misconduct Made against Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier in 1854–55

Heating Up a Case Gone Cold: Revisiting the Charges of Bribery and Official Misconduct Made against Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier in 1854-55 DANIEL J. WISNIEWSKI Introduction On July 13, 1854 Zedekiah Kidwell, a representative from Virginia, rose from his seat in the House of Representatives and announced: “I hold in my hand a very important memorial [petition] which I ask the unanimous consent of the House to allow me to present, for the purpose ofreference to the Judiciary Committee.... [It is a m]emorial ofthe Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Compa­ ny asking for an investigation of the charges preferred against the Hon. R. C. Grier, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.”1 Representative Thomas M. Howe, from Pittsburgh, quickly responded: “If left to the impulses of my own feelings and judgment, I should certainly object to the reception of the memorial; but so fully satisfied am I that the distinguished jurist to whom it relates would dissuade me from that course, could he be consulted, I shall interpose no objection.”2 A week earlier the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company had delivered a five-page “legislative memorial” to Congress, leveling numerous allegations of serious judicial misconduct against sitting Justice Robert Cooper Grier, who had been serving on the Court since 1846.3 Three allegations stood out as the most egregious. The Bridge Company claimed that Grier 1) solicited a bribe from their agents, 2) leaked the opinion of the Supreme Court early in order to favor the other party, Pennsylvania, Grier’s home state, and 3) willfully disregarded the law in considering an application for injunction.4 They sought impeachment. 2 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY In 1854 the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company accused Justice Robert C. Grier of soliciting a bribe from their agents and of leaking the opinion of a case involving their bridge in order to favor the other party, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Grier’s home state. They sought impeachment. The House Judiciary Committee received the Bridge Company’s allegations and as­ signed the task of investigating them to Rep. Hendrick B. Wright, the only Pennsylvanian on the Committee. Ultimately, Wright would produce a five-page report completely exon­ erating Grier. He would introduce the report on the floor ofthe House on the last day ofthe 33rd Congress, March 3, 1855. The report was tabled, time passed, and the allegations faded into history. Up until now, no known scholarly work has examined the contents ofWright’s Report or the circumstances surrounding its creation. The object ofthis article is to revisit the “Case of Hon. R.C. Grier’’ by analyzing Wright’s Report and “testing” it, so to speak, against the contents of two newly discovered letters,5 written from Grier to Wright in July and August 1854.6 In these letters, Grier asks for Wright’s assistance and proposes to meet to discuss the allegations.7 Background The allegations against Grier stemmed from litigation in Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., which the United States Supreme Court reviewed five times between 1850 and 1856.8 The case gained national attention and attracted famed counsel to both sides—Edwin M. Stanton for Pennsylvania and Reverdy Johnson for the Bridge Compa­ ny (a Virginia corporation). The dispute was over the height of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia. Pennsylvania argued that the bridge was built too low and obstructed the passage of riverboats going to and from Pittsburgh, and that Virginia’s charter autho­ rizing the bridge violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.9 On the other hand, the Bridge Company argued that the bridge blocked only seven steamboats that had excessively high stacks, and that increas­ ing the bridge’s elevation was not economi­ cally feasible.10 The existence of a bridge at Wheeling was very important. By spanning the Ohio River, the Wheeling Suspension Bridge would finally realize the goals ofthe Cumber­ land Road, which was to make it easier for the United States Mail and commerce in general to travel west.11 But for years, even before plans for its design were ever drawn up, interests in Pennsylvania...

Where are all the bioethicists when you need them?

Is biomedical ethics just casual talk? Is it merely medical etiquette, philosophical window dressing, full of empty rituals and little substance? Do doctors take ethics seriously? What should we expect from bioethicists when the ethical practice of medicine is at stake? One cannot ignore these questions in the aftermath of a shameful saga – ‘upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent’ – that unfolded over the election of a president-elect of the World Medical Association (WMA).1 The WMA is an international association of doctors established in the aftermath of Nazi medicine to ‘work for the highest possible standards of ethical behaviour and care by physicians at all times.’2 In keeping with its goal to provide ‘ethical guidance to physicians,’ the WMA ‘has adopted global policy statements on a range of ethical issues’ including the International code of medical ethics, and the Declarations of Geneva and Helsinki.3 The annual assembly of the WMA, hosted by the Indian Medical Association in New Delhi on October, 2009, featured ‘the unopposed election in his own country’ of Ketan Desai, [then] president of the Medical Council of India (MCI) as president-elect of the WMA.4 Six months later, in April 2010, Desai was arrested on charges of seeking a bribe of 20 million rupees (£296,000; €350,000; $450 000).5,6 No stranger to accusations of unethical behaviour, Desai was ousted from his position as president of the MCI in 2001 by order of the Delhi High Court,7–9 which observed that Desai and his family had ‘received unexplained payments totalling 6.5 million rupees (£92,000; €105,000; $150,000).’1 The Supreme Court of India dismissed this case against Desai as no evidence was found that he had ‘extended official favours to those from whom he had received payments.’ Eventually Desai was reinstated as head of the MCI in 2009.5 Reports of corruption and new bribery charges against Desai in 2010 led the government of India to disband MCI and re-establish it with a new board of governors. Undeterred by being removed as president of the MCI for a second time, WMA president-elect Desai, who had been jailed on the bribery charges, obtained bail and was about to assume his position as the new president of the WMA at its annual assembly in Canada. The MCI's new board of governors revoked Desai's license to practice medicine and informed the WMA that ‘It would be a travesty of justice if Desai, who has brought disgrace to the medical profession, is allowed to take charge as the president of the World Medical Association.’1 When the annual assembly of the WMA met in Vancouver, Canada, in October 2010, the president-elect of the WMA was found ‘unable to carry out his duties’ and his ‘inauguration’ as president was ‘suspended indefinitely.’10 In an extraordinary election, Wonchat Subhachaturas from Thailand was elected as president of the WMA. This incident – ignored or unnoticed by doctors, professional medical associations, and other stakeholders – deserves careful reflection by all who are concerned about the cause of ethics in medicine. That an ethically compromised doctor became president of a medical council or professional association is shameful but not impossible in a country like India, where corruption is endemic.9 It is difficult to believe, however, that no one in the WMA knew about Desai's past record given the fact that his removal from the MCI was reported in both national and international medical journals.7–9 The case of Desai, and the anemic reaction to his election and suspension, raise several questions about the place of bioethics in medicine: How could an ethically challenged doctor become the president-elect of the WMA? Is ethics simply a look-good decorative badge on the white coat? What will prevent this kind of ethical lapse from being repeated? This case is not about a single person or a professional association, but rather about the integrity of the medical profession and the place of ethics in medicine. Regrettably, there is no indication – at least publicly – that Desai's case generated any introspection on the part of the WMA. Corruption was noticeably absent from the agenda when the WMA adopted a number of resolutions on several health-related issues in their assembly. Is it not an ethical imperative for a professional association of the stature of the WMA to come clean and explain their position?

The ethical acceptability of gratuities: Still saying “yes” after all these years

It is flattering to be invited to respond to critics of my previous work in Criminal Justice Ethics, (1) and it would be even more flattering were those critics not so critical, or were my work truly original. The position I have taken with regard to police accepting gifts and gratuities was not originally mine but was based on many earlier discussions of the topic. I have repeatedly noted that the agency in which I served in the 1970s allowed its officers to accept small gifts and taught us to distinguish them from the conditional gratuities that the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) code taught us to reject. As I examined these matters as a graduate student, I found arguments and evidence in support of this position in the views of such distinguished criminal justice scholars as Dorothy Heid Bracey, Herman Goldstein, and Albert J. Reiss, Jr. This is not to say that they openly advocated the position I took, but what they and others presented in their reasoned discussions fortified me in staking out the position I did in 1988, defended again in 1994, (2) and still support. Primary among my theoretical predecessors is Bracey. She wrote about why corruption persists in spite of a broad consensus against it and serious efforts to eradicate it. (3) She saw that gratuities serve functions beyond the improper personal enrichment of corrupted officials, such as agency solidarity and good relations with some elements of the public. She seemed quite able to distinguish gratitude from corruption, and still recognizes the value of gift exchange in building and solidifying good police-community relations. (4) This viewpoint has been supported by Joseph A. Schafer and others as they see the value of acceptance of minor gratuities within community policing efforts. (5) For example, Herman Goldstein saw some gratuities as sincere expressions of appreciation for lawful services appropriately rendered. (6) Even Edwin Delattre, who is clearly outspoken in his opposition to gratuities, (7) acknowledged that the slope was not inevitable and that some forms of hospitality shown to police were not wrongful: My experience leads me to conclude that, for some police, the small kindness--like making fresh coffee when the police arrive in the middle of the night--is just that. It is not like a tip for a bellhop, and is not the beginning of a slippery slope. Since the intentions of the restaurant personnel are often equally innocent, police acceptance and appreciation are not illicit. (8) Reiss was an early researcher on police violations of law and regulations, supervising ride-along observational studies of actual police behavior. (9) His observers witnessed few serious violations of law, but did see a substantial number of violations of police anti-gratuities policies: Many businessmen in a community engage in exchanges or practices with police officers that from the standpoint of the law could bring charges of bribery. A variety of such practices were uncovered in our observations of the police including almost daily free meals, or cigarettes, the of gifts marking anniversaries and holidays, and discounts on purchases. Such practices are specifically prohibited by the rules and regulations of any police department and subject to disciplinary action if officially discovered. (10) His observational data confirmed my own more limited personal police experiences. I knew that minor gifts and gratuities were commonplace in my agency and in the agencies I studied in researching my dissertation. Those establishments not offering them were few, and the very few officers not taking them were clearly the exceptions. The exchanges matched Reiss's carefully worded description about a profferment of gifts, and not a solicitation of gifts, although it would be shamefully naive to believe that police officers never solicit such gifts. The Knapp Commission's 1972 report addressed various payments to police, observing that [a] third category of payments to the police is that of gratuities, which the Commission feels cannot in the strictest sense be considered a matter of police corruption, but which has been included here [in the report] because it is a related--and ethically borderline--practice, which is prohibited by Department regulations, and which often leads to corruption. …

Crisis or Catharsis? Germany’s CDU After the Party Finance Affair

That old cliche Wechselbad der Emotionen aptly describes how Christian Democrats have felt since Germany’s September 1998 federal election. First came a crushing defeat, their worst showing in decades, and the end of sixteen years in power under Helmut Kohl, “chancellor of unity.” Two of Kohl’s proteges, newly chosen federal party and Bundestag caucus chair, Wolfgang Schäuble, and his handpicked general secretary, Angela Merkel, then helped the CDU to an unexpectedly rapid recovery: during 1999, the party gained ground in every Land-level election and an absolute majority of the vote in several contests. But even before their champagne went flat, party leaders found themselves mired in postwar Germany’s worst political finance scandal, triggered by revelations about Kohl’s penchant for long sustaining a personal slush-fund with large, unreported private contributions, and even by charges of bribery.

After the Chilean Presidential Election: Reform or Stagnation?

In Latin America, where elections are usually something less than expressions of the popular will, it is significant that in Chile one of the most decisive political decisions was resolved at the ballot box. Of two-and-a-half million votes cast, Eduardo Frei, the Christian Democratic candidate, received 56%. The Socialist-Communist coalition candidate, Salvador Allende, received 39%, while Julio Duran, the candidate of the former foremost electoral party, the Radical Party, received slightly less than 5 %. With the exception of the usual bribery charges and the emphasizing of the fact that illiterates who compose 25% of the population (and who are mostly lower class) are excluded from voting, even the Communist daily El Siglo editorially commented that Frei won the popular mandate. This was both a personal triumph for Frei and a political vindication for the Christian Democratic Party which began in the late thirties as a split-off from the old traditional Catholic Conservative Party.

An Annotated Bibliogrpahy of Journalism Subjects in American Magazines

Ethical problems played a greater prominence in newspaper activities during the spring and early summer of 1949 than had been the case for many years. The question of newsmen on state payrolls, in Florida, Illinois and New York, caused the American Society of Newspaper Editors to make an official investigation. The question of medical society advertising against “socialized medicine” touched off charges of bribery and collusion in California. Overseas the British Royal Commission of Inquiry completed its study of the press and rendered a much milder verdict than had generally been expected. In both countries, however, the press was receiving increasing warnings from laymen and from its own practitioners to be more fully conscious of its public service responsibilities.–W. F. S.