Monsanto bribed 140+ people in Indonesia

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GA20Ae04.html


Though a battle between big business and environmental concerns in Indonesia has led to a monetary loss for publicly listed US agrochemical giant Monsanto for breaking US anti-corruption laws, there has been no loss of liberty for any of the company's US nationals involved in the corruption. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits bribing foreign officials and can lead to a maximum fine of $2 million per violation and up to five years' imprisonment.

St Louis-based Monsanto has been forced to pay $1.5 million in fines after owning up to spending more than $700,000 on bribes in a country where it has been losing money for the past few years, and one which has long been ranked one of the most corrupt in the world. The Department of Justice and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Monsanto with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing an Indonesian government official to waive a strict environmental requirement needed to plant the controversial genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds in Indonesian soil.

The investigation was sparked by Monsanto itself. The bribes were financed, at least in part, through unauthorized, improperly documented and inflated sales of Monsanto's pesticide products in Indonesia, the company admitted. Unlike previous toothless anti-graft bodies, Indonesia's Anti Corruption Commission (KPK) has the power to prosecute - a power that was previously in the hands of the Attorney-General's office and the police. In May, the KPK began its own investigation into the allegations. Last Thursday, as Monsanto shares rose 4.5% to close at $53.30 on the New York Stock Exchange, Indonesian investigators were starting to pull in for questioning those alleged to have been involved in the graft.

According to the US authorities, Monsanto made some $700,000 in illicit payments to at least 140 current and former Indonesian government officials and their family members, from 1997 to 2002. The biggest outlay, $373,990, was to buy land and build a house in the name of a wife of a senior Ministry of Agriculture official. Soleh Solahudin, who was agriculture minister from 1998 to 1999 and visited the company's US headquarters at its invitation, confirmed after a meeting with the KPK that both Monsanto and its local subsidiary, PT Monagro Kimia, had lobbied him to allow the cultivation of GM crops in Indonesia.
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but my dears, BBBT&M are the bloody hands bushgang's work ethic.

bully, bribe, blackmail, threaten and if all else fails, murder