Surveys consistently indicate that as many as 90% of locals have been forced to pay bribes to police and other government officials in various countries around the globe. The situation is most acute with traffic police.
It is standard policy in multinational businesses to expressly forbid the payment of bribes. This is not just on ethical grounds, but may also be against the law of the home country. But this should be balanced with a company’s statutory duty of care to protect employees from potential sources of harm. What if the police threaten violence? Recently, for example, a bus driver in Nigeria was beaten to death by traffic police at a checkpoint for refusing to pay a bribe.
If employees are required as part of their business to travel by road in countries where bribe paying to police is common practice, the risks of refusal to pay should be a consideration in the journey management security risk assessment. For business travellers often an "official" letter from an influential host in the local language may solve the problem.
Transparency International, in collaboration with a number of leading companies, such as BP, Shell, HSBC, Tata, PwC and others, has produced a useful corporate guide entitled Business Principles for Countering Bribery.
The guide can be accessed at the following link:
www.transparency.org/content/download/29197/443933/file/BusinessPrinciples_SME30Jan2008.pdf
Or from the Guest Resources section of the ARC Training Extranet. Access to the Guest Resources is free, and you can request a login account at http://www.arc-tc.com/extranet/login.asp
