Kickback
Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network
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An investigation into corporate bribery around the world and how it undermines democracy and the free market system
The World Bank estimates that rich multinational corporations pay hundreds of billions of dollars in bribes every year to officials overseas. The perpetrators are not a handful of rogue companies, but many members of the Fortune 500. Kickback is a sweeping, global investigation into corporate bribery around the world and how backdoor financial transactions undermine democracy and the free market system by lining the pockets of some of the world's worst dictators and criminals. Ultimately, this system affects billions of people by creating conditions that lead to poverty, violence, environmental disaster, and political instability in countries like Nigeria, Bahrain, Costa Rica, and Iraq.
Kickback traces the origins of corporate bribery from the reign of the British East India Company to the methods by which it is carried out today. Traveling across four continents and interviewing police and intelligence officials, convicted criminals, business executives, and corruption experts, David Montero takes an inside look at bribery's pernicious effects. He examines its ramifications at both the individual and national levels--from the murder of a young activist in Bangladesh to a Texas billionaire's dealings with Saddam Hussein, from pharmaceutical firms' payoffs in China to how the entrenched culture of bribery helped destroy the Greek economy. Montero also examines the countermeasures that have been introduced to combat these practices, such as the Justice Department's efforts to halt them and attempts to identify and provide restitution to victims.
Given the new era of profound uncertainty we are entering--the strength of the European Union founders, the power of China rises, the global economy continues on a path of perilous flux, and allegations mount that President Donald Trump and his associates are possibly tainted by bribery themselves--the stakes for eradicating corporate bribery have never been higher.
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Investigative journalist Montero explores the impact of corporate bribery in this insightful and clearly written expos . 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.)
