Commercial bribery itself has two aspects: active and passive bribery. Currently, the focus of attention is on commercial active bribery. But commercial bribery also exists great harm. This article will be through some cases from these two aspects to briefly introduce the common behavior of commercial bribery, and provide some operational advice.
First, commercial bribery
Common commercial bribery may exist in many forms, such as cash or cash equivalents, gift cards, travel, automobile use, housing use, academic conferences, and so on. The two cases described below are both typical and distinctive.
(a) give additional services or gifts
A company for the medical equipment company, its sales staff C staff in the hospital procurement project bidding process, in order to improve their sales performance, without the approval of the company's authorization, without authorization, on behalf of the company's written commitment to the hospital, said that in the procurement project, if the A company's medical equipment to win the bid, the A company can be for the current The company has been installed in the hospital put into use all the medical equipment of the company A increased one year full warranty, the behavior of the C staff caused the loss of the company A one year warranty costs, the direct economic loss up to hundreds of thousands of yuan. company A in the subsequent cooperation with the hospital learned of the behavior of the C staff, and then to serious disciplinary reasons for the termination of the labor relationship with the C staff.
Before the amendment of the Unfair Competition Law, the behavior of Employee C in this case is likely to be recognized as commercial bribery; however, after the new Unfair Competition Law has reshaped the concept of commercial bribery, it is debatable whether Employee C's behavior will be recognized as commercial bribery. The new Anti-Unfair Competition Law The new Unfair Competition Law removes the object of the transaction from the object of commercial bribery, and bribery and bribery are a pair of interdependent concepts, there is no bribery, there is no bribery.
But Employee C's behavior itself was a violation, and may even have brought serious consequences to the company. On the one hand, in the eyes of law enforcement agencies, Employee C, by promising additional company services to the other company, aims to crowd out other competitors and thus gain an advantage in business transactions, and thus may still be recognized as a commercial bribe. On the other hand, Employee C's aim was to get more sales incentives by improving his own sales performance, with the ultimate goal of personal gain.
In practice, many commercial bribes are realized by giving cash, gift cards and so on. Compared with this case, these behaviors are more covert, the company is generally more difficult to find, but at the same time was found to be a higher likelihood of commercial bribery, the harm is also greater. And under the new Unfair Competition Law, employee bribery will be presumed to be company behavior, unless the company can provide evidence to the contrary. In general, after the case, the employee will often argue that the starting point of his behavior is to benefit the company, and the responsibility should be borne by the company.
Therefore, it is recommended that the company's gift policy clearly states that the standard of gifts in business contacts, the object of gift giving and the approval process, as well as the scope of prohibited gifts, and to strengthen the training of employees, to avoid personal violations of the employee's responsibility.
(ii) academic conference
Company A is a high-tech company, in order to promote its scientific and technological products, in a senior resort held an academic conference, inviting some buyers in the market of technical personnel, the relevant areas of cutting-edge technology discussions. company A of the participants in the meeting of each person to issue a value of 1,000 yuan of the company's products coupons. The costs associated with the academic conference are directly recognized as "conference fees".
Company A was reported by an ex-employee who claimed that the company had violated the law, and law enforcement officials went to Company A to investigate. The financial books of the "conference fees" on the name of the interest of law enforcement officers, to check the meeting of the relevant circumstances.
Law enforcement officers believe that the name of Company A to organize academic conferences, invite relevant technical personnel to the senior resort, more than necessary to hold academic discussions, in fact, with the enjoyment of the ingredients; and Company A to provide participants with coupons for the company's products, itself is of value, and thus the Company A is to give participants an undue advantage to try to influence the transaction, constituting a commercial bribery. Bribery.
In practice, companies hold a variety of academic conferences to publicize their products, but such conferences often become a medium for the transfer of benefits, and are therefore the focus of law enforcement authorities. Under the new Anti-Unfair Competition Law, commercial bribery returns to its essence, and the focus of the regulation is on obtaining trading opportunities by giving undue benefits.
As you can see, law enforcement agencies will still focus on the reasonableness of academic conferences. Companies should pay attention to compliance requirements when organizing academic conferences, and regulate the holding of academic conferences in the following ways:
The invitation to the conference should be extended to the institution as much as possible, rather than to specific employees of the institution;
The venue where the conference is held should be in line with the purpose of the conference, and the conference should not be arranged for activities unrelated to the content of the conference, such as sightseeing at the attractions;
Retain relevant materials of the conference: for example, sign-in sheets to the conference;
The conference should be held in the same place as the conference.
Two, commercial bribery
Commercial bribery itself can be divided into demanding a bribe or accepting a bribe. In both cases, the subjective malice of the bribe-taker is different, and the consequences and impact on the company are also different.
(a) Ask for kickbacks
Company A was reported to know that employee B and his team used a special policy for dealers, allowing dealers to obtain Company A's products at a low price, and asked the dealers to give rebates. During the investigation, Employee B stated that he did not have the right to decide on the special sales policy given to the dealers, nor did he participate in the distribution of the rebate fees, and that he was merely trying to improve his sales performance, and therefore should not have constituted commercial bribery. In the end, although Company A did not find that employee B actually received kickbacks but still in violation of the company's rules and regulations for the reason of its termination of the labor contract.
In this case, although Employee B did not actually receive the kickbacks, he was aware of and participated in the entire transaction process, and was a link in the chain of commercial corruption. Therefore, although the employee may not have met the elements of commercial bribery under criminal or administrative law, this behavior is still a violation that should be stopped. The behavior of an employee asking for kickbacks can have a great impact on and damage the company's business operations, internal control management and ethical concepts. In general, the company will not tolerate such behavior of employees.
But in the daily business transactions, the company's employees accept kickbacks are usually found in the form of a "nest case", such as: the entire department in the daily transactions of the acceptance of kickbacks, implied by the superiors, the approval of the subordinates, specific operations, and so on. Some of these employees, especially those in the department as a whole, will use the kickbacks as departmental funds to organize trips or dinners for departmental members.
Because this behavior often occurs in the department or between the upper and lower levels, this type of behavior is very covert, everyone in order to *** with the interests of the people involved in each other will cover up the concealment, resulting in the company is very difficult to find this behavior. And when the company finds out, the corrupt behavior has lasted for a long time, especially in the case of the "nest case", which will lead to the failure of the company's internal control, and have a very bad impact on the governance of the company.
Currently, the main way for companies to discover this type of behavior is through reporting, such as employee reporting or dealer reporting. Considering the danger of this type of behavior, it is recommended that the company also strengthen the review of employee behavioral compliance, and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the internal control system to avoid the long-term circumvention of the company's system by employees who ask for undue benefits and cause economic and reputational damage to the company.
(ii) Acceptance of benefits
Company A is a traditional manufacturing company, one day the company management found that in recent years, the company's purchasing volume from supplier B has been declining, while the purchasing volume from supplier C has risen sharply. the internal audit department of the company began to intervene in the investigation. In the investigation, the internal audit department found that A company purchasing department has an employee D often take time off to travel, and travel during the cost of its actual income does not match, the internal audit department then focus on the investigation of the D employees. The investigation found that employee D often accepts the invitation of supplier C to travel, and accept the gifts of supplier C, and in the daily procurement of employee D is to increase the amount of procurement for the supplier C. Company A in the fact of finding out the facts, and then immediately with the employee D to terminate the labor contract.
In practice, many companies also respect the custom of business activities in the exchange of favors, purely across-the-board prohibit employees from accepting any gift there are operational difficulties, and thus allow employees to accept a certain amount of gifts. However, if the amount of the gift exceeds a reasonable amount, it will affect the normal judgment and decision-making of the employees, and ultimately lead to the employees to do harm to the interests of the company's behavior.
Therefore, it is recommended that companies clarify the amount of gifts that employees can accept, specify the types of gifts that are prohibited (e.g., cash or cash equivalents), and standardize the criteria for accepting gifts in external activities to avoid conflicts of interest with the company and ultimately lead to corruption.
The behavior of commercial bribery is constantly changing as the way in which transactions are conducted is updated. The several behaviors listed in this article are only the more common types of commercial bribery and commercial bribery, commercial bribery is diverse, and it is difficult to exhaust the list. The company in compliance governance, on the one hand, to establish a sound compliance system, so that employees have a basis for their behavior, on the other hand, we must also carry out compliance training, to strengthen the compliance awareness of employees, so that employees realize that commercial bribery for individuals, the company may bring the responsibility and impact, but also to establish a complete reporting mechanism to encourage internal staff and external personnel *** with the supervision, and compliance governance for regular The company has also established a reporting mechanism to encourage internal employees and outsiders to monitor and review compliance governance on a regular basis to identify potential violations in a timely manner and avoid further losses to the company.
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