Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network

Investigative journalist Montero explores the impact of corporate bribery in this insightful and clearly written exposé. He cites an academic study of 11,000 global businesses in which “corporate managers reported that 32 percent of firms similar to theirs paid bribes for contracts.” The consequences of corruption, Montero writes, are greater than merely lining the pockets of the takers. For example, overprescription of antibiotics in China (because poorly paid doctors need to supplement their salaries with graft from pharmaceutical companies) has led to increasingly resistant bacterial strains that pose an international public health hazard. One of Montero’s more astonishing revelations concerns the Oil-for-Food program, which required companies buying oil from Iraq to pay for it via an account administered by the United Nations, which would use it to provide food and other necessities for Iraqi citizens. By placing an “administrative surcharge”—or, as Montero sees it, a bribe—on each barrel of oil, Saddam Hussein was able to amass hundreds of millions of dollars despite sanctions, allowing him to secretly reconstitute his military and intelligence services. President Trump, Montero writes, is opposed to the very existence of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which criminalized commercial bribery, and the Justice Department is settling investigations of corporate criminals with fines rather than prosecutions, but the FCPA may be spawning a move away from bribery in corporate culture. Montero’s far-reaching study will likely shock even readers familiar with the issue. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary. (Nov.)