
Telia to Pay Nearly $1B to Settle Uzbek Bribery Claims - smokielad
https://www.wsj.com/articles/telia-to-pay-nearly-1-billion-to-settle-uzbek-bribery-claims-1506027280?mod=rss_Technology
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pudo
I work for one of the investigative reporting teams that initially uncovered
the bribe.

[https://www.occrp.org/en/corruptistan/uzbekistan/gulnarakari...](https://www.occrp.org/en/corruptistan/uzbekistan/gulnarakarimova/)

Doing this type of journalism requires access to large amounts of documents
and data, and we build custom tools for that. We're currently looking to hire
both front-end and data engineering devs.

So if JavaScript and billion dollar bribes are your thing, please come help
us!

* [https://www.occrp.org/en/53-other/jobs-and-tenders/7015-fron...](https://www.occrp.org/en/53-other/jobs-and-tenders/7015-front-end-developer-m-f)

* [https://www.occrp.org/en/53-other/jobs-and-tenders/7016-inve...](https://www.occrp.org/en/53-other/jobs-and-tenders/7016-investigative-data-developer-m-f)

jobs @ occrp.org

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timthelion
How do you get the data? I'm curious because there is a phenomenon here in
Prague, Czech Republic, in which there are mostly empty restaurants and stores
will obviously have no hope of making rent. Like if you calculate how many
customers go inside each day, and you assume they all bought the most
expensive item, the total revenue would be less than the cost of rent for the
location. Cynical Czechs all say that these companies are fronts for
laundering money, but would it be possible for me, as a normal civilian to get
hold of documents which would prove that? I thought that the finances of
private companies were more or less secrets.

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NiklasMort
whistle blower and other people working for such companies

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svantana
So to recap, a Swedish telco bribed officials in Uzbekistan and the settlement
goes to US and Dutch authorities, because the money was wired through New York
bank(s)?

Granted, $1B is not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but shouldn't
the money go to the Uzbeki people, who were the ones getting 'screwed'?

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himlion
As for the Dutch part. The Dutch daughter companies paid the bribes, which is
illegal under Dutch law and this is a settlement with the Dutch Public
Prosecutor. Uzbekistan should separately recover that money from the Karimov
family.

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keldaris
Whenever I see these types of laws actually being applied, I wonder why the
companies involved don't just outsource the payments to subsidiaries in
jurisdictions that don't have (or don't enforce, which is most of them) such
laws. Are there any specific legal barriers to that?

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IkmoIkmo
Dutch legal system is often chosen because you don't want to be a counterparty
to an agreement in a shitty jurisdiction.

Typically companies worry more about their counterparty screwing (e.g. not
delivering, delivering late, delivering low quality, or not paying, paying
late or paying too little) them than the government.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Jurisdictions that turn a blind eye
to bribery indicate strong levels of corruption, which means you're vulnerable
to your contract not being honoured by your partner and being unable to
enforce penalties.

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muro
Since I grew up in a country with lots of corruption, I'm personally a fan of
laws that punish companies for bribes in other countries. It's not perfect,
but funny enough, I do trust the law in (some) other countries more.

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webbles
So the bribe wasn't for enough and wasn't the right people?

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runholm
The bribe was for a rich and powerful family in Uzbekistan. The US and Dutch
authorities didn't like that.

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bostand
Telia is paying billions to US for conducting business in Uzbekistan in the
only way it can be done.

please remember this next time EU fines Google.

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dandare
If that is the only way business can be done in Uzbekistan then Telia had no
business case in Uzbekistan. It's a no-brainer.

And if you are going to argue with China taking the business, well, let China
do the bribery and take the business. The free, open economy will outperform
closed corrupted systems in the long run.

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keldaris
With the minor caveat that the "free, open economy" (which is really neither
free nor open, but I digress) contains strong incentives to prioritize growth
and short term profits over other considerations. From the perspective of most
shareholders, the only thing Telia did wrong was getting caught. I'm sure
they'll do better next time.

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xer
Can't read the article...

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Maarten88
Even using a search engine link or private mode doesn't work for me. It asks
for cookie consent, but seems to be tracking me before that already, which is
illegal here (EU). Unless nobody can read this without a subscription...

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Strom
A decent workaround for WSJ right now is facebook referrer. If you don't want
to manually set the referrer, you can use this redirect link
[http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u={LINK_HERE}](http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u={LINK_HERE})

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Dolores12
flagged for the link i can not read.

