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by gaff33 2143 days ago
How do you think the process would have gone if you agreed to pay bribes?
2 comments

One thing to note to, is that any American citizen would be unable to set up manufacturing this way because it is explicitly illegal for U.S. citizens to pay bribes to foreign governments. [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act - FCPA]

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/foreign-corrupt-practic...

(Although given this account from presumably an Indian citizen, I can't imagine in any way recommending a non-local attempting this)

Paying bribes is illegal; but facilitation payments are legal.

If you have an official who is refusing to perform their job, or taking inordinately long about doing it, then it's legal to pay them to do it. As long as you're not influencing their actual decision making process, i.e. causing them to overlook actual legal deficiencies in your paperwork, then it is legal.

It's called the facilitation payment exception to FCPA. Obviously one intending to make such a payment would be well advised to discuss with their lawyer to make sure it is indeed within the scope of the exception.

>Obviously one intending to make such a payment would be well advised to discuss with their lawyer to make sure it is indeed within the scope of the exception.

Come on. It's obvious that the "lawyer" (or agent as mentioned in the article) is paying the fees and you aren't even aware of the process unless go to the department directly and notice the lack of willingness to process your permit.

eh... you make it sound as if it's not explicitly illegal for Indian citizens to bribe other Indians.
If I paid the amounts they wanted ~ 10,00,000 (10 lakh or 1 million) Rupees each, it would be done in 7-8 months.
And I assume the agent's cut is on top of that?

Thanks for laying all of this out. Hopefully some politicians will take notice.

It sounds like it's basically impossible to run a business without paying bribes. I imagine even if you got through the NA certificate process, they would come around later for "inspections."

I'm confused by why you wouldn't just pay. If I'm not misunderstanding google, we're talking $60 USD. Which is a pittance.
1,000,000 rupees comes out to $13k according to google. Since you need to bribe multiple entities (I'm guessing all the ones listed in the article) that probably comes out to $150+k total.
Sorry I misquoted.

It would require a total of ~15,000$ USD

1. Its not a small amount in India. Lot of families live on $ 100 per month 2. SOme people worry about how their goal is achieved than achieving in anyway possible