My friend does export/import into SEA. You don’t just have to know who/when to bribe, you have to have an insider set up already. They used to have a guy in customs who would take a monthly payment to forward all her packages through without a second look. He disappeared and then trying to find the next one took months. Nothing was getting through customs, and showing up at the office they would deny any attempts to bribe. It is definitely a very coded art finding the right person, price, and parameters to get something set up like that.
It's always a guy with a gun. Fact of life. Border crossings? Find the guy with the biggest gun and bribe him. South America, Eastern Europe, etc. Import/exports have armed security too.
I've dealt with this many times as a South Asian person and it is very possible they still do actually want money. Most people will not ask in a straightforward manner for money and when you offer to pay them, they act all offended. This is a stupid game that I have no idea how it started where they will pretend to not want the money but will still very obviously want it. This has stumped me, being mildly autistic, for the decades of my existence and also stumps foreigners a lot. I cannot proffer a solution. Sometimes asking works, most of the time it doesn't and the other party feels unhappy about it and then when you decide enough is enough and want to pay, another guessing game begins where you need to gauge what amount satisfies them. It's incredibly goddamn annoying and I wish they just told you they want a bribe or money instead of engaging with these weird, obtuse, coy behaviours and then I have to obsess over whether I made a faux pas by paying/not paying them
It's their culture of saving face. The solution is extremely simple.
You tell the person "I was told I had to pay this <X fee> to release my package but I don't know who or where I pay" while waving the cash around cluelessly. The person will 100% then offer to take it and "handle it from there" under the stupid guise of plausibility.
Asian culture never ceases to confuse me. Nothing is ever straightforward.
I tried giving a gift to some, as thanks for letting me sleep on their couch. They told me no no no. I asked my friends about it, they told me it's about face.
Omg, I get that honor is a big thing, but it makes normal interactions way more complicated.
Yes when I first moved to the US, people would greet me with "How ya doing?" and I thought they really did want to know. It took a while to understand that it was just a way of saying hello.
I'm told that, in China, a way to greet someone is to say: "Have you eaten yet?" 你吃了吗
You are not supposed to provide a detailed answer such as: "Yes I ate a breakfast sandwich this morning at 8 am".
Instead you simply say "I ate" (吃了) or "Nope" (没呢)
There are concepts though shared by the area. Piety. Face culture. Ancestry worship. Conservative values.
Some areas may have it to a lesser extent (China were the cultural revolution steam rolled everything and only left superstition) but the concepts shared remain the same,the expression of the pattern varies widely.
This. I bribed my way out of many traffic tickets in Southeast Asia by suggesting that because I’m so busy, I’ll pay the cop directly and then he can pay the ticket on my behalf. Worked every time except once, where the guy was a real stickler
Often they’re afraid they’re being recorded. So the conversation should be more like asking for unrelated advice and then making some type of friendship, maybe asking for their contact if you needed any more clarification, etc. Also, they might have a trust network, like you get to them through their friends. So you should ask your friends if they know someone working in this department etc, and get an intro. That way they feel safer. You don’t have to pay them monthly, but yeah, do occasionally compensate them for no reason.
Regarding money, you should start with cash. Have an amount you think is fair on your pocket. Tell them this is what you have and thank for their help. If they don’t look happy or they reject/ask for more, tell them it though, but that you need check if you have more in your car. If the difference is a lot, say you need to ask friend for help. Go back to your car, pretend to talk to someone and come back with more. If they really want a lot more, ask for they’re bank account and tell them you’ll need to transfer (throughout make sure to show them that they asking for a lot and this is very hard for you, you have kids, need to eat, get a cab, pay a loan, etc). Also if you tell them you’ll transfer from a different bank than theirs, they might settle on the cash because interbank transfers are not same day.
All this varies by country and what methods of payment are available.
I learned recently that you want a fixer that knows and bribes people where it's customary and expected. Going through lengthy processes deaf to the trigger phrases will make your life, which could be incredibly easy, unbearably hard in many countries.
It is worth pointing out that (at least according to the corporate training I have to take every year) this is considered illegal by the US government for a US citizen to do even not on US soil; if the Feds get wind of it and feel like making a point they could throw you in jail, even with an intermediary "fixer".
As a consultant, I have to take FCPA training an average of 3 times a year. So although I’m not a lawyer, my take is that it’s only allowed if you can point to official documentation that lays out an expedited action fee schedule.
Paying a third party is just as illegal. However, unless you’re expecting to run for Congress, nobody is going to care that you bribed some low level foreign customs agent to get your ink cartridges released.
You didn't pay close enough attention in class. The US FCPA [0] explicitly allows "grease payments" (which is what we are talking about here) so long as they're not illegal in the country in question.
Grease payments are paid for the purpose of expediting a task that a low-level official is required to do anyway as part of their job, e.g. release a package from customs hell.
The FCPA prohibits bribes which are payments intended to influence high-level decision-makers to make a decision in your favor when they are not otherwise required to do so.
There were some massive bribery scandals in the late 70s where pretty much entire governments were coopted by US corporates that these laws arose in response to.
Where we get the term "Banana Republic!" for such dispicibles as the DOLE family - who, we only know the white-washed name by their offspring Bob Dole charading as a nice ol' grampa type but a good ol' corporate boy.
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One of the major scandals associated with the Dole family is the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Sanford Ballard Dole used his government influence and self-appointed position in Hawaii to push the US toward taking over the islands in the late 1890s. The Dole fruit company in Hawaii rose out of the bloodless Hawaiian coup staged by the Dole and the US government in 1893. Another scandal involved the Dole Food Company, where a jury found that Dole should pay $2.5 million in punitive damages to five workers who claimed they were made sterile by use of a pesticide on Nicaraguan banana plantations in the 1970s.
Honestly I don't think most people need a "fixer" - just any local friend. Either they will know the expected bribe amount or they can figure it out. Also you might be able to get them to do stuff for you where all of the sudden the bribe is 1/10 the amount because they are local.
Maybe if you are doing more serious stuff like business or real estate it makes sense.
In specific countries, like Brazil, “fixer” is a real job (it’s called “despachante” there) and it’s supposedly someone that knows the bureaucracy and how to navigate it.
Most of the time when you need to deal with a government agency you’d go through one of them. They don’t advertise that they’ll bribe people to get it done but that’s how it works.