Expanding into International is both necessary and positive for every company, including startups, but it has some unique challenges, as I have found out personally, like expected “under the table” payments in dealing with other cultures and bureaucracy. Some companies look at this as a “cost of doing business,” but it can easily cost you your reputation and your business.
In a recent update by Thomson-Reuters, the U.S. Justice Department and SEC reported imposing over $1.5 billion in penalties on companies in 2010. In a very recent international bribery case, Alcatel-Lucent decided to pay $137 million to settle charges that it paid millions of dollars in bribes to foreign officials to win and maintain contracts in Costa Rica, Hondurus, Taiwan and Malaysia. The days of a “slap on the wrist” for offenders are gone.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Startup Professionals Musings: Don’t Pay Bribes to Get International Expansion
Author: Martin Zwilling
