It's the same in the EU, hence the "consulting" companies. Don't get to hung up on the fact that you know the money is going towards a bribe, because legally you didn't do it, nor did you technically ask anyone else to do it. All you did was hire a company that understand the local business culture and they helped facilitate the contract.

We even had a visiting member of the EU parliament and the CEO directly asked about this scenario. The PM argued that it wasn't ideal, but that it was part of doing business with, in this case, China. Technically, yeah you know, legally, just don't have the word bribe in the contract with the consultants.

The "arms-length consulting" is absolutely illegal in the US, I'm surprised that it doesn't seem to be that way for the EU.

Based on those trainings I also have to take yearly, the US has a weird carve out for "facilitation payments" that are basically just bribes to cut through red tape and delays that probably exist just to extract bribes in the first place. But I do remember the training calling out using a third party intermediary to launder your bribes isn't a defense and you're suppose to be responsible for how your money is used. I suspect the later isn't well enforced though but I couldn't say.

My training at different global companies has always specified "Facilitation Payments" as explicitly illegal

It’s stupid complicated, but essentially right. The legality of facilitation depends on the laws of all the jurisdictions involved. So where it’s legal and customary, say, in Egypt or whatever, I think, you can get away with it. Because how else would you get anything done?

It is.

I guess people just don't know that that it's just as illegal, or feel it's less objectionable than paying bribes directly. Or they speculate that it's harder to prove.

I think they know, or at least see that it's an issue, but what are they suppose to do? Either they stay out of a large number of countries, which seriously hamper their options for expansion or they speculate in it being hard to prove.

It also create an uneven playing field. Western countries can't do business in large part of the world, while companies from those same countries are free to sell anywhere.

You don't have a god-given right to run your business in every country in the world, especially when the manner in which you are doing so breaks the law of the countries you are headquartered in.

If you did, sanctioned countries wouldn't be a thing.

'I want to make money' isn't some kind of first, last, or sole moral consideration, overriding all others.

Should western countries be able to use slave labor outside the west?

These training programs are there so the company can check a box, have plausible deniability, and so low ranking employees don’t do something stupid that exposes the company.

Yes, I had to watch the same videos when I worked for BigCo.

It's obvious though that the problem is getting caught. If bribery is endemic, then you pay both the corporate bribe costs and the "not-getting-caught" bribe costs