Further improvement is urgently needed in China's efforts to
check commercial corruption, says an article in Chinese
Business View. The following is an excerpt:
Lucent Technologies Inc has entered into an agreement with the
Department of Justice of the United States and the US Securities
and Exchange Commission to pay $25 million to the two as a
fine.
This agreement concludes a multi-year investigation into whether
the communication equipment producer violated the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act of the US when it provided travel and other things of
value to Chinese government officials and improperly accounted for
the corporate expenditure of those officials in company books and
records, according to a statement from the US Department of
Justice.
It is no longer news that multinational companies or foreign
companies are involved in corruption cases in China. Figures show
that foreign businesses and overseas trade were related to 64
percent of the 500,000 commercial corruption cases investigated in
China in the last decade.
But many corruption cases involving multinational companies were
not known in China until they were under investigation in other
countries and Lucent is the latest example.
The US Department of Justice pointed out that Lucent had offered
trips to government officials, senior managers in State-owned
telecommunication companies and heads of their provincial
branches.
If the US has such detailed information about the corruption, it
may not be difficult for the Chinese justice authorities to find
out who had participated in the trips and who had taken "things of
value" from Lucent.
The absence of strong supervision and punishment from the
Chinese side may pose huge negative effects to the country's
efforts to check corruption.
China has stepped up its efforts in checking commercial
corruption in recent years and it has also signed international
pacts in this regard. But it has much to improve in the legal
system as well as the enforcement of these legal texts.
(China Daily December 28, 2007)