Facilitating payment

For legal purposes, it is distinguished from bribery, although the distinction is often blurred. Determining whether a payment is a facilitating one may be difficult and depend on the circumstances. The value of the payment is not immediately relevant, however the greater the value, the higher are chances that it will be a red flag for law enforcement. Small unofficial payments are customary and even legal in some countries, nevertheless they may present a risk of liability according to the laws of the host country. There also exists a slippery slope danger of evolving into dubious payments. ==Business ethics==

While being legal, facilitating payments are still considered to be questionable from the point of view of business ethics. The following arguments have been made: • unfair competition: smaller business have fewer opportunities and less financial possibilities to "grease" foreign officials • sustaining questionable business practices • dependence on irregular payments creates additional risk and hence discourages investment ==By country==

Australia , the Australian law has discrepancies as to the definition of the facilitating payment. The Criminal Code defines a facilitating payment to be a payment which is: • of a nominal value (the term is not defined in the Code) • paid to a foreign official for the sole or predominant purpose of expediting a minor routine action, and • documented as soon as possible. Facilitation payments are one of the few exceptions from anti-bribery prohibitions of the law.{{clarify|date=April 2020|reason=which law? FCPA? Add link (wiki or external ({cn})) to exceptions in its article.}} Evolution of the notion Prior to the 1988 amendments, the exclusion of "grease payments" was via the definition of the "foreign official", which did not include persons without discretionary (decision-making) duties, e.g., ones with clerical functions. The major drawback of this approach is that often it is difficult to properly identify the scope of duties of a foreign official. The 1988 amendment eliminated this drawback by placing the emphasis on the purpose of the payment rather than on the duties of the recipient. At the same time, the scope of the "routine governmental actions" in question was made sufficiently narrow and supplied with detailed examples. ==See also==