Slush funds distributed via travel agencies to pay for sightseeing trips abroad. Shopping bags stuffed with bank notes handed over in parking lots. Those were just two of the ways that IBM of the US greased the palms of government officials in Asia over a number of years, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In March, the computer multinational paid a $10m fine to settle civil charges brought by America’s markets watchdog of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in its efforts to secure state purchases of its hardware in China and South Korea.
IBM is hardly unique. Just six weeks earlier, the Department of Justice said Maxwell Technologies, a California maker of energy storage products, paid almost $15m to settle both criminal and civil charges of giving bribes to win sales of its electric utility infrastructure to Chinese state-owned enterprises by inflating contract prices to cover the cost.