[lsc]

See, this is why my ethical intuition doesn't work here. I'm sure that the deal, as you propose, is legal and above board, assuming nobody looks too closely at what you "owe" the CEO over it.

However, if we take that same scenario, but instead I hand you a wad of cash equivalents, you take some percentage and pass the rest on to the CEO directly in exchange for getting me on the list, most people would agree that this is very unethical; at the very least the CEO would be liable to his or her shareholders, and at most, you, I and the CEO might all face criminal charges for defrauding the shareholders of T.

My ethical intuition doesn't see any difference between those two situations, even though one is completely normal and probably legal, while the other is certainly not