My acquaintance at the other end of the phone was complaining to me about facilitation payments. I won’t identify him by name for this column and, frankly, what’s the point? Every compliance executive complains to me about facilitation payments, and rightly so.
“The situation is preposterous,” my friend said. “At least in the United States the law pays lip service to the reality of facilitation payments, as ham-handed and confusing as the language might be. Now I’ve got the Bribery Act to worry about in the U.K., and a bunch of other laws all over the world that all say, ‘No facilitation payments, ever, for anyone,’ and it’s ludicrous. Facilitation payments happen. And sometimes it’s OK that they do.”
