HP To Pay $108M To Settle Bribery Charges

What happens when a company is caught bribing government officials? Make sure they have to pay a huge fine to the government. Wait. What?

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Hewlett-Packard with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) when its subsidiaries in three different countries made improper payments to government officials to obtain or retain lucrative public contracts.

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Extortion to make bribery go away. lol

That is why you make sure your lobbyists have PhD in lobbying. Not just a Bachelor's degree.

HP Russia did it.

also said,

Hewlett-Packard’s subsidiary

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, not HP directly.

HP Subsidiaries in Poland, Russia, and Mexico are caught bribing government officials so HP USA is fined 108m dollars.

LOL this is comedy gold. I guess US felt left out they nobody here got the bribe so they want a piece of the cake too.

CacaSapo said:

Extortion to make bribery go away. lol

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Yep, settlement out of court.. sad how the world works.

FCPA is a testy beast, indeed. I used to work for a big multinational corporation, and FCPA training is a big deal. Not only do you have triple (monetary) damages, but it's jail time for people involved.

It's a bit controversial, really--on the one hand, in many countries it's simply impossible to do business without violating FCPA, so it hurts US businesses. At the same time, though, you don't want to be encouraging corruption in foreign countries either. So which side do you take? Make it easier for our businesses to make money, or encourage better behavior in other countries?

Who gives anything based on merit these days?

It's always about the money.