Is it possible to formulate a code of rules for companies which would outlaw

bribery in all its forms ? The international Chambers of Commerce (ICC) favours a

code of conduct which would ban the giving and seeking bribes. This code would

try to distinguish between commissions paid for real services and padded fees.

A council has been proposed to administer the code.

Unfortunately, opinions differ among members of the ICC concerning how to

enforce the code. The British members would like the system to have enough teeth

to make companies behave themselves. The French delegates think it is the business

of governments to make and to impose law; the job of a business community like

the ICC is to say what is right and wrong, but not to impose anything.

In a well-known British newspaper a writer argued that “industry is caught in

a web of bribery” and that everyone is “on the take”. This is probably an exaggera-

tion. However, today’s businessman, selling in overseas markets, will frequently meet

situations where it is difficult to square his business interests with his moral consci-

ence.

Vacabulary notes

to bend one’s principles - отклоняться от принципов

to be aware of something - сознавать что-либо

to increase - увеличиваться / расти

to break into a market - пробираться на рынок

to offer a bribe / a discount - предлагать взятку / скидку

to avoid bureaucratic delays - избегать бюрократических проволочек

to stand by one’s principles - придерживаться принципов

to be accused of questionable practices - обвинять в сомнительных действиях

to grease the palm - дать взятку / “подмазать”

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to facilitate the passage of a deal - способствовать прохождению сделки

to secure contracts - обеспечивать (охранять) контракты

to reveal - обнаруживать /показывать

to clinch a deal - заключать сделку

to make donations - делать денежные пожертвования

to speed up the wheels of bureaucracy - ускорить прохождение бюрократии

to obtain approval of a project - добиваться одобрения проекта

to approve a deal - одобрить сделку

to formulate a code of rules - формулировать свод правил

to outlaw bribery - объявить взяточничество вне закона

to favour a code of conduct - поддерживать свод правил поведения

to ban the giving and seeking of bribes - запретить дачу и вымогательство взяток

to impose law - налагать обязательства по закону

to soften up an official - смягчить сопротивление чиновника

padded fees - раздутые вознаграждения /гонорары

to enforce the code - принуждать к исполнению свода законов

1. Insert the correct prepositions:

• to be aware_______bribery

• to break________an overseas market

• to get a license_______goods

• to stand________principles

• to be accused________a “slash” fund

• to divide payments________categories

• to make donations________funds

• to soften________a government official

2. Translate the following sentences paying attention to Participles :

1.Dealing with the topic of business ethics students become fully aware that

bribery in various forms is on the increase in many countries.

2.The offered bribe to a government official can help businessmen to avoid

bureaucratic delays and to settle the problems easier.

3.A company that plans to break into a certain market promising the growth

of profit is ready to spend millions greasing the palms of officials.

4.Manufacturers and businessmen financing official approval of their projects

speed up the wheels of bureaucracy and obtain the provided positive effect.

5.Facilitating the passage of a business deal a softened up official puts it on

a selective list and controls speeding up its passage.

6.Large payments made to support certain political purposes (elections, for

18

example) are also considered as bribes.

7.There must be a code of rules and commitions concerning how to enforce

the code and outlaw bribery.

3. Interpret the meaning of the following phrases:

• stand by your principles

• “slash” fund

• to grease the palm

• to clinch a deal

4. Answer the following questions on the text:

1.What information did students get to know taking courses on business ethics?

2.What purpose did the lecturers have in asking students the questions about

the soft-drinks company and the British car manufacturer – British Leyland?

3.What situation in commercial life do these examples manifest ?

4.What three categories are these payments or bribes divided into ?

5.What political purposes does financial support usually cover ? Give examples

to illustrate it.

6.What are payments or bribes of the second category made for ?

7. What cases does the third category of bribes involve ?

8. What steps do the International Chambers of Commerce (ICC) recommend

to take to fight with bribes ?

9. Could you explain the difference of opinions existing within the ICC

concerning how to enforce the code ?

5. Translate the sentences into Russian taking into consideration the structures

of the Complex Subject with the infinitive:

1.People are known to bend their principles to get what they want.

2.Bribery is reported to be increasing at present in many countries.

3.Businessmen are likely to avoid “bureaucratic delays” greasing the

palms of officials.

4.Bribery seems to have become a fact of commercial life.

5.Substantial payments often happen to support political purposes.

6.Dubious payments turn out to speed up official approval of some project.

7.Bribes are certain to facilitate the passage of a business deal.

8.A code of rules is sure to outlaw questionable payments and bribes.

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6. Supply any appropriate word from the vocabulary of the theme for

each blank space:

1.In many countries it is common to pay someone to ease the passage of

a business_________.

2.For a company__________into international markets for the first time

the___________to use bribery is very great, indeed.

3.In many cases the company will have to pay inflated__________to an

agent or make other such payments if an order is to be__________.

4.Later, there will be the routine handout to make sure the consignment

of goods is___________through customs.

5.Although an international business community like the ICC can give

guidelines to companies, it cannot___________bribery by its own efforts.

6.It is up to governments in those countries where bribery is___________

to help stamp out this___________by bringing in laws against corruption

and making sure these are___________laws. 1

7. Complete each group of sentences using an appropriate form of

the word in italics:

Ethics

1.Giving a bribe to secure a contract would be considered___________by

an honest businessman.

2.When working under pressure someone might find it hard to do what

is_____________correct.

Corrupt

3._______________can in some countries become the normal ingredient of

an aggressive sales policy.

4.Some officials will under no circumstances accept bribes. They are__________.

5.He was charged with____________accepting unauthorized payments.

Moral

6.It is easy to___________when one has never been in a position to be

Tempted.

7.She is a person of very high____________.

8.One must inevitably question the_____________of his action.

9.To offer money for corrupt purposes is______________.

10.Having no sense of what is right or wrong, he is in fact totally___________.

20

Approve

11.Securing official____________for the import of goods can be costly

in some countries.

12.Tenders for contracts have to be submitted in the____________form.

13.Many authorities express public____________of bribery, yet do little

to try to stamp it out.

14.The goods will be sent to you on_____________.

8. Oral practice: argue for or against the following debating themes:

a) What is important when somebody wants to succeed in business ?

- it is essential to learn the art of giving bribes

- to break into a market

b) What is important to know about the ways of doing honest business ?

- to compromise businessman’s personal ethics for the sake of his/her

company’s interests

- to have high moral principles

9. Role play:

You are a lawyer of a company which markets cars in Russia and over-

seas. You have recently learnt, to your surprise, that the sales department of

the company has been operating a “slush fund”. From this fund secret payments

have been made to individuals setting up deals or who have, however indirectly,

contributed to the winning of a contract. You are worried and much upset to

learn about the existence of this fund, especially since the frequency and size

of such payments seem to have increased greatly in the last two years.

Accordingly, you call the Marketing Manager of the company to give him a

piece of your mind and tell him that these questionable payments must cease

immediately. To your surprise he / she does not agree with you……..

Make up a dialogue between the lawyer of the company and the Marketing

Manager.

10. Read the text and discuss the following questions:

• Which is worse, in your opinion, to offer or to accept a bribe ? Why ?

• Which, do you think, are the most corrupt countries in the world ?

• Which, do you think, are the least corrupt countries ? Give your reasons.

21

Britain is seen as more corrupt than seven other European countries including

Germany according to an authoritative annual league table released by the Berlin-

based Transparency International group. Transparency International is a private group

set up in 1997 to fight corruption and bases its information on seven international

surveys of business people, political analysts and the public.

The cleanest countries were Denmark, Finland and Sweden, which moved New

Zealand from the top position. Britain came relatively low, in 14-th position, its

image apparently damaged by stories of sleaze. It was overtaken by Germany,

although the Germans still tolerate companies which hand out bribes to foreign

contractors.

Germany has been under pressure, especially from the United States, to plug legal

loopholes which allow German businessmen to write off bribes abroad against tax.

Yet, both Britain and even the United States, which has strict legal barriers against

international bribery, are behind the Germans. In part, this is, probably, because of

the nature of the survey which does not track such areas as company-to-company

bribery.

The most corrupt countries are regarded such as Nigeria, followed by Bolivia,

Colombia and Russia. The chairman of Transparency International, Peter Eigen, issued

a warning against focusing on Third World corruption.

“Corruption is perceived to be greatest there but I urge the public to recognize that

a large share of the corruption is the product of multinational corporations, headquar-

tered in the developing world and the countries in transition”. The Third World, in

other words, would be less corrupt if developed states stopped offering bribes.

Belgium, for example, is now regarded as more corrupt than Mediterranean nations

such as Portugal, Spain and Greece.

“Every day that the poor scores in the Corruption Perception Index are not being dealt with means more impoverishment, less education and less healthcare”, said P.Eigen.

Money was diverted from development into over-priced contracts.

A study by Harvard associate professor Shang-Jin Wei found that a rise in cor-

ruption levels had the same effect on foreign investments as raising the marginal tax

rate by more than 20 percent. Awareness is a first step to fighting or reducing cor-

ruption”, he said.

From Roger Boyes in Bonn. The Times.

10. Read the article and give a shot resume following the “Tips for writing

Resumes” (consult page 14)

22

HOW TO GREASE A PALM

The Economist December 23-rd 2006

Corruption has its own elaborate etiquette

Give people power and discretion, and whether they are grand viziers or border

guards, some will use their position to enrich themselves.

For most people in the world, though, the worry is not that corruption may slow

down their country’s GDP growth. It is that their daily lives are pervaded by end-,

less hassles, big and small.

In a testament to most people’s basic decency, bribe-takers and bribe-payers have

developed an elaborate theatre of dissimulation. Even in countries where corruption

is so common as to be unremarkable and unprosecutable – and even when the trans-

action happens far from snooping eyes – a bribe is almost always dressed up as some

other kind of exchange. Though most of the world is plagued by corruption, even

serial offenders try to conceal it.

One manifestation of this is linguistic.

Surprisingly few people say: “You are going to have to pay me if you want to get

that done”. Instead, they use a wide variety of euphemisms.

A term, used in India, is “speed money”: paying it can get essential business permits

issued considerably faster.

Some type of euphemism dresses up a dodgy payment as a friendly favour done by

the bribe-payer. Nigerian policemen, for example, are known to ask for “a little some-

thing for the weekend”. A young Canadian was offered to resolve his difficulty with

some chai , which means both “tea” and “bribe”.

Along with the obscurantist language, bribe-taking culture around the world of-

ten involves the avoidance of physically handing the money from one person to an-

other. One obvious reason is to avoid detection, which is why bribes are known as

“envelopes” in countries from China to Greece. But avoidance of a direct handover

is common even where there is no chance of detection. There will always be some

officials who will take money right from a bribe-payer’s hands, but most seem to

prefer to find some way to hide the money from view. A bribe to a border guard

may be folded into a passport. A sweetener to a traffic cop is often placed in the

ticket-book that is handed to the driver.

Yet corrupt practices in America and western Europe are nothing like as

pervasive as in other parts of the world. There is no single cultural factor that

inclines a society towards corruption, but economic factors play a big part. Most

clearly, poverty and bribery go together.

But which causes which ? Mr. Wolfowitz’s crusade at the World Bank is

based on the idea that corrupt countries fail to develop. But several countries in

Asia have grown rapidly at a time when cronyism was common, including Indone-

sia and South Korea in their time. Today’s most conspicuous example is China with

23

its explosive growth. Polls consistently show that corruption is the top complaint of

ordinary Chinese. From time to time the Chinese government executes particularly

egregious offenders, to no apparent avail. And yet foreign investors cannot pile into

the country fast enough. Although most economists agree that corruption slows deve-

lopment, a corrupt country is nevertheless capable of rapid growth. Countries may be

corrupt because they are poor, and not the other way round.

Jakob Svensson, an economist at Stockholm University, has cut through cultu-

ral stereotypes to search for hard data on corrupt economies. Among the factors he

has found that correlation with corruption is the overall education level of the adult

population. One more factor is openness to imports (measured by imports as a pro-

portion of GDP), which is linked with opportunities for smuggling. Another is free-

dom of the press on the hypothesis that independent journalists will expose, and

thereby curtail, corruption. Mr. Svensson found clear correlations between all these variables and the overall level of corruption. Corruption thus offers the confirmation

that where there is a lot of government, there is a lot of bribery: “the government is best which governs least”.

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Калинина Э. Н.