Daimler Takes A Bite Out Of Crime

by Bertel Schmitt

Published: September 29th, 2010

So Daimler had to hand over $185m to the U.S. government for settling Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) allegations that Daimler bribed officials in Russia, Thailand, Greece, and Iraq (have you ever done business in some of these places?). Then they had to hire former FBI director and Lewinsky-sperm-on-blue-dress investigator Louis Freeh as anti-corruption compliance officer. Can they possibly do more? Yup.

According to AFP, Daimler announced the creation of a director’s position responsible for ensuring respect for the law. The new member of the board, will “manage all legal activities” as well as issues of business ethics, Daimler said in a statement. And he “will be recruited from outside the company.” (At least we are being assured that he’s not a retired CIA director.) Why do they have to do this? U.S. investigators allege that even while Freeh was on the job, these illicit activities continued.

And Dr.Z. had to say with a straight face to Dow Jones Germany: “No business in the world is it worth to violate laws, rules, and principles of ethics.” When did that happen?

Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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2 comments

Chicago Dude on Sep 29, 2010

If you want to do business in the US, you have to agree to both the good and bad rules we have. And lastly, Daimler probably agreed to a bunch of silly conditions in their settlement and were somehow dumb enough to get caught violating them. I see this pretty frequently - people will prioritize minimizing their short-term costs when coming to agreements that end lawsuits while never ever considering the long-term issues relating to the agreement.

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PeriSoft on Sep 29, 2010
Russia, Thailand, Greece, and Iraq (have you ever done business in some of these places?) Russia and Thailand, not Greece or Iraq. Almost Greece, though. Also India and Azerbaijan (!). I only had to actually travel to India, which I guess among the above options might have been the best - though Thailand might have been cool. India was just maddeningly depressing, not least because the horrible injustice was so obvious and because my own complicity in it was thus that much clearer... Without going in to much detail, I can say that experiencing the two near-polar-opposite ends of the wealth spectrum within 20 minutes left as negative an impression as the multi-colored cargo trucks' honk tones left a positive one (in an LSD-trip way). Yes, honk tones. Ask me and I'll write a ur-turn... Hell, maybe I should. Indian traffic was definitely a worthy experience in and of itself... In other news, I think it's time to either fix or get rid of this WYSIWYG editor. You have to do two carriage returns to get a single space of output (thus defeating the WYSIWYG purpose entirely), it takes a while to load and interrupts one's typing, and now it's started doing incredibly bizarre things like making the font huge if I hit the down arrow and start trying to type again. And I don't even think the comments can HAVE different sized fonts!

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