arrow_back Search

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022606

House Oversight Committee
insert_drive_file IMAGES-007-HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022606.txt description DOCUMENT text_fields 786 words · 5.8k chars

ENDNOTES

'S. Rep. No. 95-114, at 4 (1977) [hereinafter S. Rep. No. 95-114], available at http ://www.justice.gov/' criminal/fraud/ fcpa/ history/ 1977/ senaterpt-95-114.pdf. * Id; H.R. Rep. No. 95-640, at 4-5 (1977) [hereinafter H. R. Rep. No. 95-640], available at http ://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/ history/1977/houseprt-95-640.pdf. ‘The House Report made clear Congress's concerns:

The payment of bribes to influence the acts or

decisions of foreign officials, foreign political parties

or candidates for foreign political office is unethical.

It is counter to the moral expectations and values of

the American public. But not only is it unethical, it

is bad business as well. It erodes public confidence

in the integrity of the free market system. It short-

circuits the marketplace by directing business to

those companies too inefficient to compete in terms

of price, quality or service, or too lazy to engage in

honest salesmanship, or too intent upon unloading

marginal products. In short, it rewards corruption

instead of efficiency and puts pressure on ethical

enterprises to lower their standards or risk losing

business. Td. 3 See, e.g, U.S. AGENCY FOR INT'L Dev., USAID ANTICORRUPTION STRATEGY 5-6 (2005), available at http://transition.usaid.gov/policy/ ads/200/200mbo.pdf. The growing recognition that corruption poses asevere threat to domestic and international security has galvanized efforts to combat it in the United States and abroad. See, CLs Intl Anti- Corruption and Good Governance Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-309, § 202, 114 Stat. 1090 (codified as amended at 22 US.C. §§ 2151-2152 (2000)) (noting that “[w]idespread corruption endangers the stability and security of societies, undermines democracy, and jeopardizes the social, political, and economic development ofa society. vee [and that] [clorruption facilitates criminal activities, such as money laundering, hinders economic development, inflates the costs of doing business, and undermines the legitimacy of the government and public trust”). 4 See Maryse Tremblay & Camille Karbassi, Corruption and Human Trafficking 4 (Transparency Int'l, Working Paper No. 3,201 1), available at http: //issuu.com/ transparencyinternational/ docs/ ti-working_paper_ human_trafficking 28 _jun_2011; U.S. AGENCY FoR INT’L Dev. FOREIGN AID IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST 40 (2002), available at http://pdfusaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABW900.pdf (“No problem does more to alienate citizens from their political leaders and institutions, and to undermine political stability and economic development, than endemic corruption among the government, political party leaders, judges, and bureaucrats. The more endemic the corruption is, the more

Endnotes

likely itis to be accompanied by other serious deficiencies in the rule of law: smuggling, drug traficking, criminal violence, human rights abuses, and personalization of power.’).

> President George W. Bush observed in 2006 that “the culture of corruption has undercut development and good governance and

.... impedes our efforts to promote freedom and democracy, end poverty, and combat international crime and terrorism.” President’s Statement on Kleptocracy, 2 Pus. Papers 1504 (Aug. 10, 2006), available at http i//; georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ news/ releases/2006/08/20060810.html. The administrations of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama both recognized the threats posed to security and stability by corruption. For instance,

in issuing a proclamation restricting the entry of certain corrupt foreign public officials, former President George W. Bush recognized “the serious negative effects that corruption of public institutions has on the United States’ efforts to promote security and to strengthen democratic institutions and free market systems... .” Proclamation No. 7750, 69 Fed. Reg. 2287 (Jan. 14, 2004). Similarly, President Barack Obama's National Security Strategy paper, released in May 2010, expressed the administration’s efforts and commitment to promote the recognition that “pervasive corruption is a violation of basic human rights and a severe impediment to development and global security.” THE WHITE House, NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY 38 (2010), available at http:// www.whitehouse.gov/ sites/default/files/rss_viewer/ national_security_ strategy.pdf.

6 See, C85 INT’L CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, ET AL., CLEAN BUSINESS Is Goop BusINEss: THE BUSINESS CASE AGAINST CORRUPTION (2008), available at http ://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/news_ events/8.1/ clean_business_is_good_business. pdf; ; World Health Org., Fact Sheet No. 335, Medicines: Corruption and Pharmaceuticals (Dec. 2009), available at http ://wwwowho.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs335/ en/; Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption: The Facts, FOREIGN Por’y, Summer 1997, at 119-20; Paolo Mauro, Corruption and Growth, 110 Q. J. Econ. 681, 683, 705 (1995) (finding that “corruption lowers private investment ... [and] reduc[es] economic growth ...”); THE WorLD BANK, THE Data REVOLUTION: MEASURING GOVERNANCE AND CORRUPTION, (Apr. 8, 2004), available at http ://go.worldbank.org/87JUY8 GJHO.

’ See, e.g., The Corruption Eruption, ECONOMIST (Apr. 29, 2010), available at http://www.economist.com/node/ 16005114 (“The hidden costs of corruption are almost always much higher than companies imagine. Corruption inevitably begets ever more corruption: bribe-takers keep returning to the trough and bribe-givers open themselves up to blackmail”); Daniel Kaufmann and Shang-Jin Wei, Does “Grease Money” Speed Up the Wheels of Commerce? 2 (Nat'l Bureau of Econ. Research, Working Paper No. 7093, 1999), available at http ://www.nber.org/ papers/w7093.pdf (“Contrary to the ‘efficient grease’ theory, we find

104

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022606