Customer Reviews

Bribery and Extortion: Undermining Business, Governments, and Security (Praeger Security International)

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Alexandra Wrage's work on cross-border bribery and corruption comes at a pivotal time. Nations around the globe are joining together to form international compacts to combat the bribery of government officials. The United Nations has adopted an anti-corruption convention that compels its members to adopt national laws to prevent corruption. Enforcement agencies vigorously prosecute multinational corporations that use bribery to pervert free competition to their own benefit. The World Bank now denies lucrative development contracts from companies that have corrupted foreign officials. The tide of global sentiment appears finally to be turning against the corruption of foreign officials and the distortion of the free market, and Alexandra Wrage has been at the forefront of that fight for more than a decade. For this reason alone, her book is important, informative, and timely.

Alexandra Wrage's book addresses what I describe as the sordid underbelly of international business - companies that seek to win business from foreign governments by bribing influential officials, and foreign officials who abuse their positions and extort business and private citizens in the performance of their duties. Wrage is the president and founder of TRACE International, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating these distorting practices. TRACE interacts with many constituencies, from corporations conducting international business, local sales representatives, consultants and distributors who promote products in their home jurisdictions, government officials and NGOs. In her unique position, Wrage has become something of a sounding board - or perhaps therapist - for those who have personally faced bribing corporations and corrupt local officials. She has collected more than a decade's worth of anecdotes in "Bribery and Extortion." As a someone who has practiced law in the anti-corruption field for fourteen years, I thought I had seen or heard it all, and still found myself sitting, mouth agape, as I read Wrage's book. The tales will shock, produce outrage and evoke sadness. But while Wrage acknowledges that the topic is serious and its impact devastating, she seeks to capture the absurdity of those seeking to do wrong by setting a light-hearted and wry tone. To the extent that a book on such a weighty topic can be delightful and funny, it is this one.

Wrage's work, however, is not simply a collection of humorous, absurd and wretched tales. Rather, Wrage introduces a systematic way of talking about the twin problems of bribery and extortion. She provides order and categorization to the patterns of criminal behavior and to its corrosive effects. In this way, Wrage's book serves as a guidepost to those of us who combat corruption - compliance officers, counsel, government officials and NGOs. Knowing and understanding the many forms that the doppelganger of corruption can take is perhaps the most valuable tool to fighting it.

I highly recommend Wrage's book This is a must-read for businesspersons, lawyers, scholars, students and anyone interested in cross-border business and it's challenging dark side.

Although I suspected there was more to meet the eye in organizations like those under the umbrella of the United Nations, The World Bank(it self), The Olympics, Save The Children - I hadn't got the real skinny on it - until now. No one gets a pass, unless of course, the price is right!
Corrupt officials at all levels set up obstacles, from small road blocks to major deal-breaking demands - it is at the highest levels of nations & multi-national corporations(executives & board members) - if you can imagine it.../it's there.
Successful bribe-takers give rise to rings of criminality around themselves as they influence family members and their cronies/who inturn create their subsequent circles/ that inturn ripple out into the vast pound of globalization/taking with them whatever means necessary to counter oppostion. It has sadly become/a World Of Do-It-Yourself Cliff Notes in International Kleptocracy, A Virtual World of: "Good Job Browns".
The corporatization of governments have resulted in the institutionalization of corruption. The doctored accounts, the public-misrepresentations, and illegal transactions have become a common place of corporate behavoir, a privitized swine-flu spreading worldwide. Even the world system of public health today is like a chain w/every link for sale.
Governments collect revenues that are supposed to be devoted to the public good, and the most straightforward way for corruption to undermine the legitimacy of a governing regime today involves the public resources being depleted directly by theft - THINK BAILOUT!
Corruption is taking direct aim at the democratic processes and institutions themselves, substituting the will of the bribe-paying for the will of the people.
Get the down and dirty on what is going on in you & your children's world of today. To be forwarned is to be forarmed.
Read all about it!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!!