 In this topic we are going to discuss an aspect of ethics which is criminalization of bribery. Bribery in previous times was not considered to be a criminal offense but with the development of ethics in business the bribery and corruptions they have been evolved into concepts of criminal later. So we are going to talk about the story through which bribery has been criminalized in the international scenario. So before that we discussed what happened, what is bribery and corruption. Bribery and corruption is paying agents to do things inconsistent with the purpose of their position or office so as to obtain an unfair advantage. So bribery is to give somebody to do something which they are not supposed to do under their regular office position. But bribery is not equal to facilitating or Greece payments. Greece payments they are given to public officers or officers in order to do something in an expedite manner. The thing that they are already required to do by their office but in order to facilitate that or in order to make that happen quickly. So that is not bribery. Bribery is when you give some amount of money to do something which is illegal or unlawful and is not under the purpose of that office. Bribery is looked from varying ethical perspectives so some nations and cultures they consider bribery as part of the business. Some consider that because they consider that business is for profits and anything that is done for profit is correct. But there are other cultural scenarios in which bribery is considered to be unethical. But the general understanding about bribery which has developed over the period of time is that it is something which is for the disadvantage of the general people. Which is for the disadvantage of the larger group. So it undermines equity efficiency and integrity in the public service. It undercuts public confidence in markets and aid programs. It adds to the cost of products and it may affect the safety and economic well-being of the general public. So whether you consider that bribery is correct or not this is something that has detrimental effects on various different aspects of society and organizations. So therefore because this general understanding has developed that bribery is something which is to the disadvantage of the society and the organizations. That then led to development of initiatives to stop and criminalize bribery. So first of all America they passed their foreign corrupt practices act FCPA in 1997. That permitted facilitating payments but that mandated record keeping provisions to help ensure that illegal payments are not disguised as entertainment or business expenses. That was in 1988. So facilitating payments were allowed but they had to be kept under strict accounting laws. FCPA has been criticized for creating competitive disadvantage for the US firms and also to create ethnocentricism. So you remember that according to ethnocentricism you believe in your own cultural values. So it was criticized that America tried to ban the payment of bribery amounts to people in the international market. So US firms and US officials cannot give bribery to anyone in the international market. So one criticism is that they are creating a disadvantage because the rest of the firms from Asia and Europe are indulging in this practice. So when Americans don't do it, they will have a disadvantage. And the other one is that their criticism is that there is ethnocentricism. That means you think your values are right and you are imposing them on the rest of the world. But this is something which was then taken up by the rest of the world as well. In 1996, the UN adopted the Declaration Against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions which committed the UN members to criminalize bribery and deny tax deductibility for bribes. And then in 1997, OECD, which is one of the biggest organizations to control commerce, it passed the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. So according to that OECD members convention, members agreed to establish domestic legislation by the end of 1998 criminalizing the bribing of foreign public officials on an extra-territorial basis. So until 1998, the members were supposed to make domestic laws, not just international laws, that they would make their local domestic national laws. So they would give bribes to foreign public officials in a local country, and they would decide to cut and catch them. And the OECD convention that came into force in February 1999 and by 2009, 38 countries had ratified this. So what they are supposed to do is that each member state is required to undergo a peer review and to provide a report reviewing its implementation of the convention. So the country reports, they are also available on the website of OECD. Then OECD requires convention, requires sanctions to be commensurate with the domestic penalties applicable to bribery of public officials. So wherever public officials' bribery scene is seen, they issue penalties. So the initiatives that have been given so far are about the supply side of bribery, that is, the people who give it are about controlling it. But the site that is being ignored is the demand side. Meaning that the people who take bribery, their contact is controlled internationally. That is something which the HR managers are now responsible to take into account. Then another initiative to control bribery and corruption is the Transparency International Organization, which is a German NGO, which publishes an annual corruption perception index. This is a perception but not actual levels of corruption for over 50 countries. And it is based on international surveys of business people and financial journalists. And each country is scored from 100, which is highly clean to zero, which is highly corrupt. According to the 2018 corruption index, the top 10 neat clean countries are Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Luxembourg. They have a score of 80+. So towards 100 is being clean. So you can see that all these countries except Canada are small countries with high per capita income and they are successfully developed countries. Pakistan is at the 117th number, the score is 33, up by 3 points since 2015. Similarly to compare, India is at 78, the score is 41 and up 3 points since 2015. So you can see that Pakistan is way below India and way below. So if there are about 190 countries in the world or some kind of similar number, then Pakistan is at the 117th number. So that means that Pakistan is at a high level of corruption and bribery index, which needs to be dealt with and which needs to be taken into account by the HR managers who are working in the international domain, particularly in Pakistan.