Corrupt Language

Australia’s ongoing Cole Inquiry into local involvement into the UN ‘Oil for Food’ scandal gets us back to the use of language to defend corrupt practices.
In this case we now have ‘facilitation payments’ to describe bribes.
And what do you know? While bribes are obviously seen as unacceptable behaviour they suddenly become essential, acceptable business tools as facilitation payments.

And after all, facilitation payments are acceptable, aren't they? In general, they seem to be. Most Australian companies working overseas face this dilemma. For companies like BHP there are firm rules. The payments must be minor, they must be reported to management and be "culturally" appropriate.

Commonwealth law finds that a bribe is a payment to encourage an overseas official to do something illegal, while a facilitation payment is a modest payment to make something that would lawfully happen, happen faster.

AWB came close to sneaking under the bar with that one, despite the fact these were not ‘minor payments’, until another term ‘money laundering’ was introduced into the argument. We now, eagerly await the legal language which will transmute money laundering into a fair business practice.