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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28906 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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It is illegal under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to have a relative of foreign politician on the board of a US company?

Depends on details. See also.

From your link: "Officials are trying to establish whether the bank hired young workers from prominent, well-connected Chinese families in order to curry favor and win business."

Yes, that is obviously improper. But that begs the question, right? The assumption that if a company puts a famous "unqualified" name on its corporate board, it must be for an improper purpose, is highly naive.

The assumption that if a company puts a famous "unqualified" name on its corporate board, it must be for a proper purpose (and that saying that you're simply getting "appearance" benefits is a magical incantation which guarantees that it's a proper purpose), is highly naive.

I didn't say it was for a proper purpose. Not once.

You just highly implied it, which is kind of your MO. Cards on the table, which of the following do you agree/disagree with?

  1. It is plausible that a company could hire an employee/board member for an improper purpose, due to his/her connection to government officials.
  2. It is, in fact, actually more common than one might think that companies do this across the world, because it is a reasonable attempt at a "neat trick" to perform crony capitalism when the more direct routes have become significantly more difficult due to bribery/campaign finance/etc. laws.
  3. When a company with enough of a US presence does this abroad with children of foreign government officials, it's illegal under FCPA.

No, I didn't imply it at all. I made a very simple point: The assumption that, if a company names an "unqualified" person to their board, it can only be for the purpose of bribery or the like, is based on a failure to understand how corporate board appointments work.

As for your questions:

  1. Yes, duh.
  2. I have no idea how common it is, nor how common "one may think" it is.
  3. I am not overly familiar with the FCPA, but I assume that "hir[ing] an employee/board member for an improper purpose, due to his/her connection to government officials."

But, again, all of that begs the question as to whether it was for an improper purpose. Again, the common argument, "it must have been for an improper purpose, because all he brings to the table is his name" is based on ignorance, because a famous name is all that many, if not most, corporate board members bring. As is often the case, it is rarely true that "if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention," but rather that "if you are outraged, you probably don't understand what is going on."

Do you think that the various companies that have been pursued under FCPA could have said, "No no no, you see, you've got it all wrong. We don't hire children of Chinese government officials in order to actually get things. We hire them so that we have the appearance of being able to get things!" Would this work? They just need investors to think the company has connections and the advantages that come with that. What [company] needed from [child of Chinese politician] was the appearance of advantage, not so much actual advantage.

Again, I am hardly an expert on FCPA, but based on my perusal ofthe DOJ page discussing the act, yes it would certainly seem that that would be a valid defense, if the jury believed it. It would be a difficult argument to make in the case you cite, because those appear to be low level hires, not board members, who, in contrast to low level hires 1) are publicly known by investors to have been hired; and 2)are often, in fact, hired for purely PR purposes. It is even possible that Burisma wanted the Biden name because Joe was seen as a straight shooter, and hence Hunter's presence created an inference that Burisma's financial statements were relatively trustworthy., compared to their competitors. (And, before someone starts talking about the "Biden crime family", I said was seen as.)

Again, the point is not that Hunter Biden is innocent. I have no idea. All I know is that this supposed smoking gun is no such thing. It only appears that wayto those who are naive about how corporate boards operate.

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People who think that the fact that the practice is widespread proves anything doesn't understand how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act works. This is 100% illegal if we catch companies with a suitable US presence doing it for children of foreign politicians.

Most 1st world countries have laws like FCPA which prohibit their companies from bribing 3rd world governments, with broad extra-territorial application and broad definitions of bribery. It isn't per se illegal to put a relative of a foreign politician on your board, but if you do it in a notoriously corrupt country then you are going to be spending some time helping the police with their enquiries into precisely what your motives were.

The reverse case - a 1st world politician accepting a bribe from a 3rd world company - comes under domestic bribery laws which are far harder to convict under - basically you either need a quo that is so outrageous that no honest politician could have delivered it, or smoking gun evidence linking the quid to the quo.

The people who write the laws think have a much lower prior on a domestic politician accepting a bribe than on a foreign politician accepting one.

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