I read in Private Eye (no online source, sorry) that the Serious Fraud Office really wants to drop any further investigations into Saudi and African arms deals. Due to a rather Calvinist upbringing, I find the idea of giving backhanders to do business repugnant. But I did wonder what the reader's view of such activities was.
A callous pragmatist might consider it just a cost of doing business. Is our "moral compass" right or wrong to denounce this kind of thing? After all, it's not really any different to dropping your price at the end of the day. And if everyone is doing it...?
Update: Guthrum says it's bad.
6 comments:
If a crime has been committed, surely it's for the wronged party to press a charge?
Who is the wronged party here?
The competition? Why don't they press charges in the country where this is alleged to have happened?
It's win-win for us to sell arms. We claw back some money, keep our weapons industries primed and able to give only the very best to our men (except when we overextend and cannot afford to), and foreigners kill each other.
Where these 'incentives' are considered de rigeur, taking the moral high ground means we don't make the sale.
I think back handers are fairly common in large contracts. Surely the right response is to investigate and prosecute rather than investigate and then stop when politicians start crying "national interest"?
Hypocrisy of the highest order.
If a UK company wants to do business overseas, giving back handers is 'wrong' because the corrupt official is robbing his own government and hence its taxpayers, but with the Saudis, there's no distinction between 'corrupt officials'. 'government' and 'taxpayers', so no moral problem at all.
What is wrong is all the export subsidies that UK arms manufacturers get. Subsidies = always bad. But as anon says, it's still win-win overall.
In principle I think this kind of thing is absolutely fine, I have no problem with it.
As I understand it though, the labour 'government' with the intention of being whiter than white, actually made this illegal. Stupid fucks. They never fucking think about the ramifications of what they do!
Only we Northern Europeans and those originating from us don't regularly give presents for favours. In China it was called the squeeze. If you din't pay the eunuchs you didn't get your document up to the Emperor or his chief minister. It is de rigeur in Nigeria to offer your local cop/cops a monetary present otherwise you will be stopped and searched regularly. In Moscow the traffic cops expect a present of money or they make problems for you as a foreigner. If it's the only was to secure a big chunk of business, consultancy fees or whatever will be paid. It's we who are unusual in not having a bribery culture, peerages excepted of course.
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