Boeing Co. earns about 70% of its commercial plane sales from foreign buyers, many of which are affiliated with, if not controlled by, foreign governments. And in the “high-stakes, international bazaar for large commercial jets, where tens of billions of dollars are on the line,” as The New York Times describes it, Boeing, with the help of U.S. diplomats, vies for contracts with its European competitor, Airbus.
In other words, conditions are ripe for corruption.
Today’s report by the Times, based on (of course) cables released by Wikileaks, focuses on the extent to which the U.S. government flogs Boeing’s planes abroad, sometimes with the promise of political favors. But the story also sheds light on foreign bribery issues faced by the single biggest exporter of manufactured goods in the U.S.
The report says Boeing turned away requests in Turkey and Tanzania to hire agents, who charged steep commissions, to gain access to top officials.
In a 2007 cable cited by the Times, an official recounts how Boeing refused a demand in Tanzania that it hire a mysterious hotel executive there to serve as a go-between with government officials. The cable notes that such payments typically “ended up in Swiss bank accounts.” The Times doesn’t identify the author of the cable.
When similar requests were made, the company often reported them to the State Department, according to the Times. Tim Neale, a Boeing spokesman, told the Times that for Boeing, “it is not just a matter of abiding by U.S. law and laws internationally but a general sense of business ethics.”