Multinational corporations and corruption scandals

Common sense usually blames on public sector of being the sole responsible for the main corruption scandals across the world. However, a Non Governmental Organization called Transparence International (TI) has put an eye on private companies and provided evidence on the contrary.

TI has recently made known a research conducted to find out which is the origin of the Multinational Corporations more involved in briberies to the public administration of 15 developing countries around the world. It became known that Russian, Chinese, Taiwanese and Koreans companies are at the head of this “corruption ranking”. On the other hand, TI reported that US, British French and Spanish investors usually pay more bribes than their competitors in Sweden, Switzerland and Austria.

This research was made among 835 executives, consultants and business experts in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Poland and Thailand. These businessmen expressed, mainly, their concern about the usual behavior of investors from Global corporations, which do not hesitate to paying huge amounts of money in briberies to keep their businesses running in such developing countries.

TI’s investigation, has been released in a very convenient moment, as for instance, many IMF officials refuse to secure funds to Argentina blaming on the corrupted authorities of the country. They expressed they would not send money to a country where its functionaries do everything they can to steal these funds. In this particular case is important to remember that they are talking about a political administration elected by the people and therefore, they should show, at least, more respect for this authorities.

What can be remarked of this report is that not only the public sector is liable of corruption scandals and if there is somebody that receive bribes, there is another that give them.

Hernan Etchaleco PRAVDA.Ru Argentina