> I know of people who AWS fully sponsored, including business class intercontinental travel, to attend re:Invent which is essentially a week long holiday party, by virtue of AWS bill.

Flying people to an AWS conference seems entirely different than funneling money into a single person's bank account.

Yes, I know these conferences have a party-like atmosphere, but it's not done surreptitiously and it's not siphoning money out of the deal into someone's pockets.

Pharmaceutical companies used all inclusive "conferences" to influence doctors to prescribe more opioids. It was effective enough to be banned.

> Accepting a free trip to a drug-company-sponsored conference guided doctors to write more prescriptions of the company’s drugs, a spike of 80 to 190 percent

https://www.drugwatch.com/news/2012/01/18/pharmaceutical-com...

America is generally good about limiting things to legal graft. I can't offer an elected official money in exchange for a vote, but I can donate millions to entities controlled by the elected officials that are my "friends" and make sure they know about it.

It doesn't really seem that different.

You think inviting someone to conferences is the same thing as putting $700k in their personal bank account?

Is this satire? What is going on in this thread?

At least in the medical field, conferences only provided the thinnest veneer. Doctors were paid handsome fees to present, which is tantamount to dropping money in their bank account when you compare it to other professions whether people often go to conferences on their own (or company’s) dime.

Some people think that quantitative differences are never qualitative differences. Zero, one, infinity, right?

It is VERY different, come on.

It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space vs. a shady deal between a supplier and ONE person of another company, without its employers consent, on top of that.

If I know AWS will fly me out for good times every year (but only so long as I select them for my Big Enterprise Account), I'm more likely to pick them over a vendor that won't do the same, regardless of what's better for the company. Bribery doesn't require currency, it just requires an exchange of value.

And my boss knows that, and it's okay for executives to make corporate decisions for personal reasons. It's not okay for executives to make corporate decisions for personal reasons without acknowledgement, and particularly not with explicit deception. The difference between "my product is better for intangible reasons" and "my product is better because of lies out of teeth is fraud.

Taking personal kickbacks from vendors can be legal, so long as it's reported to your employer (and the IRS). What's not legal is hiding it from your employer because they have policies against it, and every (large) employer does.

The sole owners of large private companies can and do occasionally get personal kickbacks for their business. It rarely makes sense for them, because as owners of large private corporations they have better way of extracting cash from those companies (like literally paying themselves a salary or bonus). Totally legal, though.

It’s different in facts, but it’s not different in spirit.

Did you know that pharma sales reps take out doctors to play golf all expenses paid, plus fancy restaurant lunch in the end?

Is that different?

How about a lobbyist donating money to a political party?

Is that different?

Google the law of reciprocity. It’s human nature.

It is different in spirit.

A marketing scheme intended to attract new customers is well within what's morally accepted. Also, it's not like every guy that goes to AWS re:Invent comes back with a brand new luxury car. What they get is just some good food and drinks, while they're there, and that's just providing good hospitality for your guests. It also does not happen behind closed doors, and most of the people that go are already existing customers.

vs.

Corrupt company approaches corrupt employee off the record to offer cash in exchange of contracts that would not get assigned to them otherwise (because if they were, they wouldn't resort to this).

The main difference here is the scale.

"Let us take you on a $2000 vacation" vs. "Let us take you on a $700,000 vacation." One is objectively ridiculous - this is the difference.

So what you’re saying is taking a smaller bribe is okay? Just as long as it’s not a “ridiculous” bribe…

There are thresholds elsewhere. For example, a civil servant can accept a gift, up to a very small amount, from a vendor without being an ethics violation.

But there’s proportional impact as well. The person who got the AWS treatment might be responsible for $50K of AWS budget. And the person at Netflix is responsible for millions of dollars of budgets, royalties and other schemes.

> It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space

In Vegas...

Hmm, even at my most cynical I would say the difference is the free conference is a much smaller (and thus presumably less effective) bribe. Giving away tickets to a conference which they sell the tickets for costs AMZN very little (sure, there are costs associated with putting it on, but those would have had to be paid anyhow, adding an attendee or two won't change much). So it's a few grand worth of airplane tickets vs. $700K...

This situation is like lobbying: is it the people's voice in fungible action or is it mega-corporations funneling money directly into politicians pockets?

The answer is probably both, and any attempt to litigate it will probably be abused and lead to even more issues.

That is not really close to what these charges are.

Kail received money and stock directly, not as part of a business or sales exchange. Being flown to a conference where you'll be told the merits of your potential purchase is obviously very different.

Even if Kail had innocently owned stock in a company being evaluated it likely would have been a conflict of interest and they should have stepped away from the evaluation. This happens all the time. As a CEO I can tell you I've had people stop a call partway through because they realize they're conflicted out of the discussion and I'll have to talk to a neutral party.

While normal business travel can have a bit of a boondoggle aspect to it (and your example would probably not be OK for US government employees), it's not generally considered a personal payment or gift as a kickback would be. So, no, it's not the same thing in the manner that paying for someone's personal vacation week on a tropical island would be.

Companies pick up at least some expenses for customers, partners, journalists, analysts, etc. to attend business events all the time. And everyone involved is very clear about the difference between that and handing them a stack of bills under the table.

(And speaking for myself, I can think of a lot of places that I'd rather be than Las Vegas for re:Invent.)

There is no magic loophole by giving people stuff rather than paying them money directly. In tax law this is just called a non-cash benefit and it is taxable all the same. I'm sure the people writing corruption guidelines had the same insight.

The "loophole" is that, for gifts of more than a token amount, it has to be a legitimate business expense--whoever is picking up the bill. Waiving a conference fee and covering some or all of the travel expenses to a conference, would widely be considered legitimate business expenses. Normally these would be picked up by my company these days if I had a business reason to attend an event and I need to pay for registration and travel. But conference organizers routinely waive at least the conference fees for journalists, analysts, speakers, and possibly others they want to attend.

Working in finance, I have to report any gift above €50. This includes when I would receive a gift or lottery for a training, a conference, etc. So for us it is at least treated like a potential personal payment.

At one point in my career I was one of those people. Not AWS but I went to many a conference on the vendor's dime. Ran up some impressive bar and restaurant tabs while there. Also on their dime. Some vendors didn't have large conferences and would fly me to a nice resort somewhere for a few days which included some product info sessions. Usually at that point the people trying to keep your business and those trying to get your business are all doing the same thing so it is all ineffective in influencing your choices. In fact during that time I would say a majority of the vendors I was involved in selecting actually did neither.

At none of them was there any kind quid pro quo even hinted at. My employer knew about and approved all trips beforehand.

This is way different than what happened here. Direct payments to an employee for award of work without knowledge of their employer.

Kickbacks are a personal payment, an illegal personal incentive to a business transaction.

This guy was soliciting cash and stocks! A crummy sponsored trip to a conference would have been arranged through the employer, and is not the same thing.

Also, the set of people with a happy home life and people who are excited by corporate hospitality is a small one.

Not the same at all. Paying for people to attend your event versus paying them directly as income are worlds apart.

It's all fun and games until you swap AWS for Purdue Pharma and point people for doctors and suddenly there is an opium addiction epidemic. This shit has real consequences.

I guess at least the courts are there to fix things... except when it's also okay for members of the highest court of the land to get sponsored golf/hunting trips, and even be caught dead in one...

What is this referencing?

I don't think the argument "I've seen it happen around me" means that it is necessarily routine or common throughout society. If I'm a basketball player and most of the people around me can dunk a basketball, while it may be common in my circle, it certainly is not common throughout the American or global population.

I think in the UK they have laws which basically say that bribery is defined by employers. It is bribery if employers don't approve the payments/gifts as part of the job. I think it is similar in the US. People in your examples probably got the approval, but this Netflix executive definitely didn't according to the article.

Things like that - e.g. conferences, paid travel, etc - are common. But I think it's different from a manager charging kickbacks for awarding an IT contract, and on only by pure semantic.