Everyone knows that bribery is a crime but what may not be so obvious is that it's an
offence if commercial organisations fail to prevent someone associated with them, such
as an employee or an agent, from bribing someone on their behalf.
There are some indicators which can point to a corrupt relationship where bribery could
be taking place, so this is bribery and corruption indicators by what you need to know.
We'll look at these in five areas: payments, gifts, a person's behaviour, documentation
and when organisations are working on projects which involve tendering and contracts.
Let's start with payments.
Few payments these days are made in cash, so any cash payment should raise suspicions,
or if any pressure is exerted to have a payment made urgently, or ahead of schedule.
A payment with abnormally high commission rates can be another sign especially if these
are split into two accounts which might be in different jurisdictions.
In a similar way, criminals sometimes provide goods and services to one country and make
the payment to another. These payments will often be to bogus, shell companies, which
are used to transfer the funds on.
One more thing to keep an eye out for is the payment of high value expenses on someone else's behalf.
Examples of this would be paying for school fees for someone's child, or perhaps for travel
and accommodation expenses for a person's family.
Excessive gifts and corporate entertainment have often been used to bribe people and it
can be difficult to know where to draw the line between legitimate gifts and entertainment
and bribes.
The legislation states that gifts should be reasonable and proportionate and gift registers
are used to record any offers of gifts or entertainment. These records help to make
the organisation's activities transparent and protect their reputations from suggestions of wrongdoing.
People involved in bribery obviously don't want others knowing what they're doing and
will try to hide their activities as much as possible.
This can lead to certain behaviours such as never taking time off - even if they're ill,
and never taking holidays - clearly they don't want anyone covering for them in their
absence as they might find something suspicious. For similar reasons they're likely to insist
on dealing with certain contacts or agents themselves.
Documentation can be key to transparent working practices and proof that correct procedures
have been followed.
Organisations generally have clear procedures on what needs to be documented and how the
documents should be stored. When these aren't followed, it might mean that someone is trying
to cover something up. Typical examples of this are meetings or decisions not being properly
documented, or documents going missing.
You may have heard of so called facilitation payments, backhanders and kickbacks, or someone
greasing the wheels.
Especially when talking about tendering for projects and contracts. Really these are just
another way of saying bribes and there are some particular behaviours and signs to watch for.
Here are some of them.
Unexpected or illogical decisions. For example, a contract being accepted when it appears
to be on unfavourable terms, or has to be completed in an unrealistic time period.
An unexplained preference for one contractor over another during the tendering process.
The avoidance of independent checks, or bypassing normal tendering and contracting procedures.
Barriers around specific departments which deal with contracts and tendering, and meetings
which appear to be unnecessarily private.
A tender or a contract which was expected to be problematic going through very smoothly,
especially if the person running the operation has little expertise or experience in the area.
Finally an invoice being paid in excess of the agreed amount without there being any
kind of justification or reason for it.
Any of these could have perfectly acceptable explanations, but when unexplained, unexpected
or unusual events happen, it could mean that bribery is taking place, which means your
organisation could be liable for failing to prevent a person from bribing on its behalf.