Part I Transnational Corruption and International Efforts at its Control, 3 A Typology of Corruption in Foreign Investment

Subject(s):

Corruption — Investment — Investment ‘in accordance with host state law’

This chapter categorizes the many modalities of transnational corruption within two groups — transactional and variance bribery. Transaction bribes are payments routinely and often impersonally made to a public official to secure or accelerate the performance of that official's duties. The payment is not made in order to secure the public official's divergence from a substantive norm. Instead, the payment is made simply to ensure that the public official performs his duty more efficiently, hence the term ‘grease money’ or the euphemism ‘facilitation payment’. Variance bribes involve payments made in order to obtain a favourable result through a deviation from the proper application of a norm. The bribe might be paid in order to suspend the operation of a legal prescription, or in order to have a public official exercise his discretion in a manner favourable to the payer.