Last Wednesday, Russian officials raided Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) Moscow office, as part of charges that HP paid a bribe of about $10.9 million to the Russian office of the prosecutor general to ensure a $47.8 million contract. Last Friday, U.S. Federal prosecutors indicted the former president of U.S. private security firm Blackwater (now called Xe) and four other employees, charging them with bribing Jordanian officials to win a lucrative contract there. Also on Friday, the SEC presented civil fraud charges against U.S. bank Goldman Sachs, accusing the firm of defrauding investors. (Fast Company, 4/15/10; BBC, 4/16/10)
The instances are unrelated, but three allegations in one week suggest that both national and international authorities are cracking down on what they believe to be illegal corporate activity and fraud. Why now, and who’s next?
Eric Zavolinsky
