CORRUPTION AND BRIBERY

Corruption and Bribery

Corruption and Bribery

Introduction

Corruption is the abuse of office by elected or appointed government officials. It can take many forms, but is most often used to characterize situations where an official has exchanged favors related to their office in return for personal gain. That gain sometimes involves cash payments directly to the individual—which leaves the official open to tax evasion charges should the exchange come to light—or in the form of campaign donations. Congress has made periodic attempts to reform campaign-finance rules, most notably in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act. Bribery is generally defined as the offering of money or a favor in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust.

Bribery is an inevitable consequence of the interaction between political figures who control the economic resources of the state and private firms attempting to gain profit from these resources. For hundreds of years, bribery has been institutionalized across the globe by corrupt political leaders and commercial firms determined to gain access to markets and scarce natural resources. Historical records routinely link European traders to bribes paid to political leaders for favorable treatment, including bribes offered by the East India Company in the seventeenth century to obtain preferential treatment from members of the British Parliament. This paper critically analyses the meaning of corruption in an international business setting and assess its economic and moral impact. It also discusses when corruption is morally corrupt.

Discussion

Commentators often describe today's campaign finance situation in the United States as 'legal corruption' because it allows private interests to buy access to and influence with government officials in a way that is technically legal under existing laws. Government corruption, broadly speaking, occurs whenever political leaders, elected officials, or other government actors subvert the central purpose of government—which is to promote the public good—for private benefit. The definition of corruption used by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, is "the abuse of public office for private gain." According to most experts in this field, corruption can take various forms—everything from illegal bribes or kickbacks to government officials, to conflicts of interests or ethical violations affecting government work, to more systemic but often legal types of corruption such as the campaign finance and lobbying scandals often featured in US news reports. Many experts conclude that all forms of corruption, whether illegal or legal, pose a threat to democratic principles. (Elizabeth, 1999)

Types of Corruption

There are several different types of political corruption. Bribery is the payment of money or other enticements to an official in order to receive favorable treatment. In 1876, U.S. secretary of war William Belknap was removed from office by congressional impeachment after he was found guilty of accepting bribes from companies seeking lucrative federal-government licenses that permitted them to trade on Native American reservations. (Rose, 1999)

Graft is defined as acts that involve only the official, and not a second party, and that also ...