It's likely that there are many more cases that have gone unreported. However, it could also be that the public has started to hear of more cases as U.S. authorities become more aggressive about punishing corporate payoffs. As Fortune's Stephen Gandel pointed out earlier this week, federal officials are pursuing more bribery cases thanks to the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 that effectively requires CEOs and CFOs to certify their companies' financial filings are correct. And that includes reporting bribes.
As it turns out, the culture of bribery and kickbacks is more prevalent in Mexico, China and Russia, at least according to Transparency International's 2011 Bribe Payers Index, which ranks the world's major economies by the tendency of their companies to offer bribes abroad. A high score reflected a low likelihood of bribery. The Netherlands and Switzerland both scored 8.8, the highest of 28 economies. The U.S. came close scoring 8.1. Mexico (7.0), China (6.5) and Russia (6.1) scored the lowest.
It might be easy to assume that bribery is just the way business is done in corrupt states, but at the end of the day, it almost always ends up costing companies more than they realize.
