The company is also believed to have bribed the terrorist group to allow it to use a fast route through ISIS territory that avoided government checkpoints.
The telco used sham contracts, inflated invoices, and falsified financial statements to funnel millions to ISIS and local power brokers, with millions still unaccounted for.
Oh damn. That's going beyond just trying to maintain your infrastructure for the sake of the populace.
Companies that are willing to pay terrorist groups will have no qualms about doing business with Russia, which is why all of the talk of sanctions is usually pointless. Nobody keeps to them on things that matter. If there's money to be made, companies will deal with terrorists no problem and as we've seen from past sanctions on nation-states, governments will carve out all kind of exceptions for the well connected and turn a blind eye to even more, only giving a slap on the wrist to those who get caught.
This isn't a given, and your stating of it as a certainty seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those things only happen to the extent that voters let them and telling everyone that it's inevitable is exactly what keeps corruption running.
Tyler Cowen refers to this as the libertarian vice:
no company, especially of the multi-national and/or publicly traded variety, has any qualms about doing business with any body.
if you think otherwise, youre kidding yourself.
companies are incentivized to have qualms through a mix of legal measures and risk assessment of backlash.. then once the "correct" choice is made, they make big PR statements about their allegiance to utilize it to empower their brand.
every company who has supported green endeavors or BLM would support a party of Nazis if it was in their benefit. The line from Amazon to IBM isn't that far.
they are not your friends. theyre not allies in your cause. they are not conservative or liberal. they are not moral or immoral.
This is a particularly egregious case but reports about FCPA cases like these (and the ensuing calls to imprison executives) neglect the fact that most major multinationals do not want to pay anyone. Governments in about half the world require you to pay to get anything done, especially in highly regulated sectors like telecommunications. The government employees in charge of licenses, permits etc in these countries will literally refuse to do their jobs unless you pay them. Walmart just recently had a [$300 million](https://apnews.com/article/latin-america-us-news-ap-top-news...) fine for paying a local "expeditor" to get construction permits in Brazil. They didn't pay for a monopoly on supermarkets, they didn't pay prosectors to investigate their competitors, they paid so they could build a Walmart in Brazil. Is that evil?
How did you feel about the CEO's reaction? I thought it was authentic, not the usual bullshit with a "sorry not sorry" apology. Also, he did not try to "sweep it under the rug". Example quote from Borje Ekholm: "I know part of this involves me, and part of it involves before. I’m not going to blame anybody for anything."
Many voices die in silence. It is hard to gauge motivations when it comes to the right to have a voice, because it is an appropriate arena for fanaticism.
This is another reason I have reservations about the expansion of contract labor in the modern workforce. Far too often, it creates a conflict of interest between the contract company and contract hire.
Tangentially related but much more banal, I have a relative that works in the payment processing industry, overseeing an engineering team. One of his best employees was an overseas contractor that spent many years with the company, brought his family to the states and laid down roots. After 7-8 years with the company, his contracting firm wanted him to move to another company in another state where he could earn more. He didn't want to go, but his contract stipulated that my relative's company could not hire him under any circumstance, so his firm wound down his contract to essentially force him and his family to move. This was in a smaller city without a lot of other IT jobs, so he didn't have many other options.
The fact that huge corporations have that kind of power over people makes me really uncomfortable and to see a huge telecom company use contractors to negotiate with terrorists doesn't surprise me in the least.
Edge cases in ideal conditions happen at random. When there's a conflict of interest, or any other systemic problem, so-called edge cases happen more often, because the situation consistently gets pushed to the edge, so to speak.
There's no shortage of workers getting pushed to take risks much bigger than any potential reward.
It's not the being kidnapped by terrorists part, it's that companies ask people to do all kinds of stuff that falls into legal gray areas, which provides them a buffer if something goes wrong.
I think we need to redefine how we think about contracting to protect contractors and reduce the amount of power companies currently have over them. Thinking about sending a contractor to negotiate with a terrorist should scare the pants off of companies.
Another thing on the contractor note. I just got off the phone with a company that refused to consider me for a position because everyone is required to have a Bachelor's degree. This was after being recruited and referred by a VP after working for them as a contractor for over a year. These big corps keep burning bridges.
Seems worth mention that such a contract is often not enforceable. In typical cases, all it takes is a written note saying you are terminating the contract, at the time or any time after you leave. If they are not paying you anymore, there is no "consideration" so (anyway under US law) no remaining basis for a contract.
Sometimes the contracting company has a deal with the de facto employer forbidding them to hire anybody who was once contracted to them. Those also can often be set aside, even without notice to the former de jure employer. Governments are often hostile to contract provisions interfering with somebody's right to have a job in their field.
I am not an attorney. Consult a local attorney in every case, because case law is all over the place, laws likewise, and judges moreso.
That persons contract is very non-standard and likely completely unenforceable. Contractors are generally far less susceptible to coercion than permanent employees are. Employees believe they have something to lose (their mostly imaginary “job security”). Contractors know their employment is temporary and they routinely need to look for new work without much notice.
The student Jumaah (an adult) returned willingly to Iraq to protect his wife and texts the professor to essentially apologise for the high likely-hood he wouldn't be able to turn in his homework (cos, you know.. beheadings).
The professor chats to their Uni Security Chief who leaps to attention and hires his "go-to" mercenary force to rescue the student and his family?!
They then happily give him a seemingly smallish bill for the whole job and no mention of visa problems. Wtf Sweden, is this normal?
That's a great story. But who is this university security chief? I for some reason picture Bruce Willis, who just retired from being some CIA/Navy Seals operative and just took up this job wanting to quietly live out the rest of his years at the university.
The thought of contract workers wearing off-color Ericsson badges parading into a building where they might end up beheaded while on a mission to install 802.11ac routers… is quite dystopian.
> One told German public broadcaster NDR that he was sent to Mosul with a letter on behalf of Ericsson seeking permission from the terror group for them to continue working there.
Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go deliver something to a terrorist group for any amount of money.
Reminds of one time I was interviewing someone and I asked why he had left his previous job. He said they were building a device to block cell phone usage in prisons, and the inmates figured out who was making the hardware and slipped word out to their enforcers outside the prison with the name of the manufacturer. Soon all the employees started getting death threats. So, he quit.
In the US, isn't the legality of jammers very questionable? It might be less bad somewhere federally owned, but a state prison interfering with signals might be violating FCC rules.
Alternatively, you could build the prison like a Faraday cage.
You could possibly make an argument for some groups considered terror groups for actions against governments, but ISIS throws gay people off building and puts civilians in cages before burning them alive. You must feel for the unaffiliated residents but there's no way I'd set foot there for any reason.
it's a company like ericsson. if this person didn't have too much an idea of the world i can imagine he'd just think negotiating with what the US calls "terrorists" is just BAU in this part of the world.
i mean, i can imagine large swathes of human habitation where society is organized around deadly force. literally one country exists right at the border, where cartels manage the economy.
If you're doing infrastructure for the old regime and you're not particularly attached to the old regime and a new regime shows up it's completely normal to send some reps to figure out if the project is to be continued and the details thereof.
Obviously there are situational judgement calls that can't be captured by slinging stupid internet rules of thumb around but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. It's not like they are a defense contractor who were supplying the people shooting at the new regime a week ago. And in this case it was a local contractor so that adds a potential layer of baggage.
> but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in.
I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in Iraq.
> The contractor was kept under house arrest, and claimed that the Ericsson manager then stopped answering his calls. "He abandoned me, he turned off the phone and disappeared."
In some organizations it's also typical to throw the contractor and underlings under the bus when the project turns to sh*t.
ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups. This is all common intel that vendors would have and obviously intel someone in their legal department bothered to read.
Doing business with someone implicitly supports them. There is no way around that.
As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are refusing to do business with.
But that doesn’t mean providing critical infrastructure services to literal terrorists is ok.
The original source, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that includes an interview with a kidnapped worker (and a copy of a letter requesting contractors to continue work in Mosul), is at: https://www.icij.org/investigations/ericsson-list/iraq-isis-...
Funny you mention that -- when our liaison came to the airport he called the CTO and hand-wrote out an authorization form . . . then paid the border security people MPesa (and cash) lol . . .
FCPA actually allows facilitating payments for things like this. No one will prosecute you for it in the US.
Of course, Ericsson did get FCPA sanctioned for other stuff since they paid kickbacks etc. It’s actually quite fascinating. The real victim here is the foreign state that is suffering from the corruption but US law protects them. I suppose it’s anti-trust sort of law. It retains competition for fair-playing US companies.
Definitely an interesting positive-externalities US law.
i was involved in the setup/config of new Sun servers for a Morgan Stanley office in India in the late 90s. everything was done ahead of time in the London HQ and shipped over to India. it was well-known by everyone on that project that there was a cash slush fund that our couriers and the employee who shepherded the gear over to India had to use at various levels to grease the wheels.
If I pay a bribe or facilitation payment to the local warlord, I, personally, break laws in my own country.
This even applies if I pay a taxi driver to take me to the site, and he pays the bribe.
If I'm paying a bribe for safety purposes (say giving a bottle of scotch to pass a checkpoint to get back to the hotel before night), then if I'm lucky I won't be prosecuted when I return to my home country.
The great thing is I don't feel guilty about not tipping in the US.
"Facilitation payments, which are payments to induce officials to perform routine functions they are otherwise obligated to perform, are bribes"
Readit News
The telco used sham contracts, inflated invoices, and falsified financial statements to funnel millions to ISIS and local power brokers, with millions still unaccounted for.
Oh damn. That's going beyond just trying to maintain your infrastructure for the sake of the populace.
Tyler Cowen refers to this as the libertarian vice:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/08/th...
There is an enormous range of tolerance for this and portraying it all in the most cynical light is actively harmful.
if you think otherwise, youre kidding yourself.
companies are incentivized to have qualms through a mix of legal measures and risk assessment of backlash.. then once the "correct" choice is made, they make big PR statements about their allegiance to utilize it to empower their brand.
every company who has supported green endeavors or BLM would support a party of Nazis if it was in their benefit. The line from Amazon to IBM isn't that far.
they are not your friends. theyre not allies in your cause. they are not conservative or liberal. they are not moral or immoral.
they are amoral and greedy.
period. the end
Sources:
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/8779157b-5568-48e7-a117-96b74c6db... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/4fd12e9b-6037-4f4d-8b3a-63cce4a57...
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Tangentially related but much more banal, I have a relative that works in the payment processing industry, overseeing an engineering team. One of his best employees was an overseas contractor that spent many years with the company, brought his family to the states and laid down roots. After 7-8 years with the company, his contracting firm wanted him to move to another company in another state where he could earn more. He didn't want to go, but his contract stipulated that my relative's company could not hire him under any circumstance, so his firm wound down his contract to essentially force him and his family to move. This was in a smaller city without a lot of other IT jobs, so he didn't have many other options.
The fact that huge corporations have that kind of power over people makes me really uncomfortable and to see a huge telecom company use contractors to negotiate with terrorists doesn't surprise me in the least.
There's no shortage of workers getting pushed to take risks much bigger than any potential reward.
I think we need to redefine how we think about contracting to protect contractors and reduce the amount of power companies currently have over them. Thinking about sending a contractor to negotiate with a terrorist should scare the pants off of companies.
Sometimes the contracting company has a deal with the de facto employer forbidding them to hire anybody who was once contracted to them. Those also can often be set aside, even without notice to the former de jure employer. Governments are often hostile to contract provisions interfering with somebody's right to have a job in their field.
I am not an attorney. Consult a local attorney in every case, because case law is all over the place, laws likewise, and judges moreso.
https://www.thelocal.se/20181213/lund-professor-freed-studen...
The student Jumaah (an adult) returned willingly to Iraq to protect his wife and texts the professor to essentially apologise for the high likely-hood he wouldn't be able to turn in his homework (cos, you know.. beheadings).
The professor chats to their Uni Security Chief who leaps to attention and hires his "go-to" mercenary force to rescue the student and his family?!
They then happily give him a seemingly smallish bill for the whole job and no mention of visa problems. Wtf Sweden, is this normal?
Bruce Willis wishes he looks like this dude
Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go deliver something to a terrorist group for any amount of money.
Alternatively, you could build the prison like a Faraday cage.
i mean, i can imagine large swathes of human habitation where society is organized around deadly force. literally one country exists right at the border, where cartels manage the economy.
Obviously there are situational judgement calls that can't be captured by slinging stupid internet rules of thumb around but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. It's not like they are a defense contractor who were supplying the people shooting at the new regime a week ago. And in this case it was a local contractor so that adds a potential layer of baggage.
I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in Iraq.
In some organizations it's also typical to throw the contractor and underlings under the bus when the project turns to sh*t.
As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are refusing to do business with.
But that doesn’t mean providing critical infrastructure services to literal terrorists is ok.
Is this victim blaming, or am I misreading it?
Don't pet feral animals.
Don't run with scissors.
Don't wear a fur coat in the desert.
Don't drink bottles labelled "poison".
So, it should reasonably follow:
Don't hand yourself over to violent, hostile people.
You need the ability to distinguish between a bad social cliche like "short skirt, asking for it" and this.
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That was quite an experience; not every nation is friendly to Western nations, turns out.
Of course, Ericsson did get FCPA sanctioned for other stuff since they paid kickbacks etc. It’s actually quite fascinating. The real victim here is the foreign state that is suffering from the corruption but US law protects them. I suppose it’s anti-trust sort of law. It retains competition for fair-playing US companies.
Definitely an interesting positive-externalities US law.
This even applies if I pay a taxi driver to take me to the site, and he pays the bribe.
If I'm paying a bribe for safety purposes (say giving a bottle of scotch to pass a checkpoint to get back to the hotel before night), then if I'm lucky I won't be prosecuted when I return to my home country.
The great thing is I don't feel guilty about not tipping in the US.
"Facilitation payments, which are payments to induce officials to perform routine functions they are otherwise obligated to perform, are bribes"
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210907-french-firm-lafa...