[bearbearbear]

It's not uncommon for corporations to pay money in bribes because in many countries it's a cost of doing business; it would be otherwise impossible to get anything done.

If a company is required to pay, say, $3,000 to a corrupt official to pass a checkpoint and get access to an area where they have some business to tend to, then scale that economically to a multinational conglomerate like Microsoft who might do business in that same area 35 times in a week for various reasons and the amount of bribe money flowing out of their coffers increases to scale.