I know this sounds like a dumb question, but please hear me out…
Suppose I’m the Food, Beverage & Concessions director for the soon-to-be-built StraightDopeLand theme park. We’re trying to determine which cola will get exclusive rights to be sold in our theme park. I casually mention to the Pepsi® guy and to the Coke® guy that I could use a better car. When I get home from work that night, there’s a Jaguar in my driveway with a can of Pepsi® in the driver’s seat. Pepsi® gets the contract, and all the happy visitors to StraightDopeLand enjoy Pepsi® products with their meals.
Has a crime been comitted here? It seems to me like this is scarcely different than all the wining-and-dining that goes on between executives trying to secure one another’s contracts. And in this case, no public trust is involved; that is, there are no government contracts in the balance here. It’s all private money.
Companies often have rules regarding what kind of “gifts” their employees can accept from vendors. I don’t think it would be illegal, but it might be against company policy.
I don’t have a clue about US law, but I wanted to point out that, though it’s all private money, apart if both parties involved happen to be the sole owners of their companies, it’s all other people (the stockholder’s) private money.
And even if you’re the owner of the company, this bribe is an income, and you should pay taxes on it, logically.
Would an irregularity like the OP scenario be, in and of itself, a violation of a fiduciary responsibility, or would there have to be evidence that choosing Pepsi over Coke cost the company and stockholders revenue?
What if it could be shown that the choice of soft drink distributor made no impact on the bottom line?
Or, what if it could be shown that choosing Pepsi made more money for the company?
I don’t regard the OP as being particularly improbable. My Dad used to be in a similar situation of power vis a vis soft drink selection. I remember Coke picking him up and flying him on their company jet to World Series games in the early ‘70’s. Later on, when the family would go to Disney World, there would be complete complementary ticket packages waiting for us at the gate.
Logically, if Pepsi or Coke was willing to give a Jag to the concessions director, they would have been willing to pay the equivalent amount in cash to the company which owned the theme park in return for the concession. Hence, the breach of fiduciary responsibility.
You’re right, jkirkman, that ordinary corporate practices sometimes skate pretty close to this line. The usual dodge in such cases is that the “bribing” company provides something that has a lot of emotional value but not a lot of cash value–in your example, the company jet was probably going to the World Series anyway, and the tickets don’t have that high a face value. Even so, the company being wooed should have policies forbidding its officers from accepting such favors. Often, however, they don’t.
If the Jag was worh around $50 I could accept it, any more and I have to hand it over to the Company Secretary for disbursment amongst the Corporation (although how they would do this beats me).
When I worked in the marketing department for a major corporation you are all familiar with, a director with 10 years at the company was escorted out by security in front of everybody for doing just this. We all got gifts from vendors, but apparently he crossed the line by soliciting them and the value was far above and beyond (well into thousands of dollars) the “premiums” we received.
I don’t think charges were filed.
For the record, I believe the more common term for this is kickback.
Commercial Bribery and Commercial Bribe Receiving, the activities being described here, are a crime under New York State Law and, I believe, the laws of the other U.S. states.
Even so, they happen all the time. And yes, they’re called ‘kickbacks’ in my experience.
I have controlled a God awful amount of spending in my time. Little gifts are always coming my way from my account reps. Fruit baskets, sports tix, expensive lunches, whatever…
It’s part of the game. No jags though.
Ad guys can sometimes get it even better. When I worked for the hotel magazine and most of our advertisers (and people we covered) were suppliers to hotels (and also consumer goods) we’d end up with televisions, beds and bedding, minibars, etc.
Good days.
Now, of course, I work on a series of military magazines. I don’t think Lockheed Martin is going to drop a tank on me anytime soon.
Well gang right or wrong the OP’s scenario is a freaking way of life here in Brazil. As the administrator of a medical clinic here I see this every day. I bought 15 new PCs for our net work and received 16, the bill was for 15, so I called to tell them to come pick the “mistake”, about a half an hour later the sales man calls me back, very indignant, “what’s wrong don’t you like it, I had it built just for you” I was flattered (right) and said if he wanted to do me a favor, come get the machine and give us a discount - he did and that was that, now whenever I’m confronted with this sort of thing I just make it clear that who ever gives me the best price gets the sale, this goes for uniforms, printing, medicine, film for X-rays - you name it. It goes in reverse as well, we (the clinic) once had a situation where we had to pay 10% of the revenue generated by the clients of a certain health insurance company -DIRECTLY- to the company director, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be treating very many of their clients in the future. This would hurt so we paid it and looked at it as another tax, if we didn’t then the business would just go to somebody else who was willing to “play ball”. It is illegal, as well as unethical, in a Mafioso sort of way - but the judicial system here is so slow (this case would be in process for YEARS) that it’s hardly worth it to complain.
Not acting on behalf of a corporation, but for oneself, it seems perfectly legal in Mexico. If you own a restaurant, Coke or Pepsi will provide all your tables and chairs (imprinted with their name, of course) if you agree to an exclusive contract. If you go with Modelo products instead of Moctezuma products, you get Corona-branded display cases for free.
When I get ready to open my churrascuria here in the USA, I’ll see if I can get that kind of deal!
It doesn’t look like bribery to me : in the case, a company is giving to another one (or in the case of your restaurant, to an individual business) a bonus in exchange for their business. In the case of the OP, the corporation is giving a jaguar (or a table and some chair) not to the company it’s dealing with, but to one of its employees. That’s not the same thing at all. Let’s assume that instead of giving table and chairs, the corporation was offering a rebate : that wouldn’t be a bribery. Except if the rebate was pocketed by an employee of the restaurant who happened to negociate the contract.