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"Former" Microsoft employee, Yasser Elabd, has called out his former employer accusing it of widespread bribery and corruption in its activities against the Middle East and Africa. He claims he was dismissed for calling them out on it and alleges further that reports to the DOJ and SEC have fallen on deaf ears. After starting to scratch the surface, it appears to be a question of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.
Examining an audit of several partners conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, I discovered that when agreeing to terms of sale for a product or contract, a Microsoft executive or salesperson would propose a side agreement with the partner and the decision maker at the entity making the purchase. This decision maker on the customer side would send an email to Microsoft requesting a discount, which would be granted, but the end customer would pay the full fee anyway. The amount of the discount would then be distributed among the parties in cahoots: the Microsoft employee(s) involved in the scheme, the partner, and the decision maker at the purchasing entity—often a government official.
For instance: In three of the seven sampled transactions, discounts worth more than $5.5 million were not passed through to the end customers—in this case, two government-controlled entities. Another audit report showed a deal with the Saudi Ministry of the Interior in which a $13.6 million discount did not pass through. Further audits of deals in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia found a total of $20 million unaccounted for—and this involved only two partners out of hundreds across the region. Were an audit conducted for all of the partners using these practices, I believe the sums of money found to be stolen would be enormous. Where did these millions of dollars go?
[...] Another common practice revolved around creating fake purchase orders, which sales managers presumably used to increase their compensation. In 2017, it was suspected that one sales manager forged the signature of the Saudi National Guard's deputy minister on a fake Microsoft purchase order. I have evidence that people on Microsoft's legal, HR, and finance teams—as well as officials from the region's public sector—knew about this forgery. When the matter was investigated, the sales manager threatened to speak out about the widespread corruption he had seen at the company. I heard that Microsoft paid him to leave quickly and quietly, took no legal action against him, and did not report the forgery.
I am not the only person at Microsoft who has alleged corrupt practices. I know of five others from various departments who were terminated or pushed to resign for raising flags about inconsistencies in finances. For example, a whistleblower filed an anonymous complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleging the South African Department of Defense overpaid Microsoft partner EOH Mthombo for software licenses. According to the complaint, the deal—in which middleman EOH received $8.4 million, far more than Microsoft made—was flagged to a Microsoft compliance officer, but no action was taken by the company. The whistleblower contends that this was because EOH was helping Microsoft with a $50 million contract for the South African Police Service.
Given the lack of quality and functionality across their line of products and services, bribery appears to be a common tactic to close the sale or break the competition.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28 2022, @06:09PM (7 children)
Someone needs to go back to school. Pay extra attention when they teach about the differences between the roles of government and head of state, and how they differ. Spoiler alert: the concepts "republic" and "democracy" are orthogonal, you can have non-democratic republics (like North Korea), democratic republics (like South Korea), democratic non-republics (like the United Kingdom) and non-democratic non-republics (like Qatar).
But don't take my word for it, read Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 28 2022, @06:30PM (6 children)
Or, so the story goes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @01:07AM
Lol you are so tiresome
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @04:43AM (4 children)
Note that word democracy doesn't appear in that quote at all. Nor any variations of the word. The USA is a democratic republic, a republic where the people vote for their lawmakers (mostly). That is different from a direct democracy where the people vote directly for the laws, but it's still a democracy. Though some states do have a bit of direct democracy with an initiative system, like California.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @04:57AM (3 children)
So close to being correct - but the US is still not a democracy. It's a republic, with some democratic values - when it feels like it. When the US doesn't feel like it, then we go about destroying democracies, for fun and profit.
How many American got to vote on Operation Ajax? Did you get a vote on Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Do you get a vote on the situation in Ukraine? The people in Washington don't give a fuck what you think, until election time. Then they do a lot of "pivoting", "walking back", just plain lying, and spreading bullshit far and wide.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @08:00AM (2 children)
You got to vote for the representatives, didn't you? That's democracy. Representative democracy isn't direct democracy, but it's still democracy. If you don't like the way your representative votes, then vote for someone else. If you don't like any of the candidates, run yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @01:37PM (1 child)
Then China is a democracy too? Just has one major party (instead of two or three like other countries) ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @07:51PM
It seems to have democratic elements. I wouldn't really classify it as a democracy, since only local representatives are elected by the people. The ability to run for office seems a bit limited too, though not completely restricted to CCP members.