ELI5: What’s the difference between bribery and treating someone to influence them?

r/

Let’s say I own a car dealership. Let’s say I also have a daughter in a chess club who I want to be on a team that will go to a chess championship tournament. The individual who chooses the team is the chess coach. I invite the chess coach over for dinner. I cook a real nice dinner, buy some nice wine and I tell him that he can get a discount at my car dealership. I never explicitly say I am trying to influence him to put my daughter on the chess team going to the championship tournament, but that is my intention. Would this be bribery? At what point does treating someone with the intention of influencing them become bribery?

Comments

  1. cakeandale Avatar

    Bribery is using influence to try to persuade someone to do something corrupt or illegal. If the thing you are trying to persuade them to do isn’t corrupt or illegal, though, it would merely be a “grease payment” or facilitation.

  2. CharsOwnRX-78-2 Avatar

    At the point that they can have a serious monetary or political influence on you or your business

    Wine and dining the teacher or director of the chess club, nobody’s really gonna bat an eye, they’ll just grumble about how your kid doesn’t deserve to be there

    Do that with your town’s Mayor or the Governor or the Senator, and suddenly laws and bylaws get passed that favour your car dealership? That’s corruption right there

  3. jeezfrk Avatar

    Not being indicted by anyone because there’s no smoking gun proof.

    In any other case … we apparently don’t know what “bribery” actually means.

    Not unless the money fell out of your pocket right as you forgive the scofflaw who paid you.

  4. zed42 Avatar

    bribery is giving something of value to someone so that they use their position to do something you want. you can bribe your daughter’s chess coach with a nice dinner and a cheaper car, you can bribe the secretary with a cookie, you can bribe a supreme court justice with a luxury motorhome and a free vacation… all of it is bribery (and this is why many companies have policies against accepting anything of value from vendors, or giving anything of value to potential clients/customers) but the question becomes at which point does “the law” care?

  5. ChapBob Avatar

    A bribe is paying someone to do something that is wrong. A reward is paying someone to do something that’s right…assuming you believe there are moral absolutes.

  6. tuesday00 Avatar

    I think it has more to do with where the choice is taken. Did the decision maker take the bribe and decide based off that, e.g. conditions were changed according to the size of the bribe? Or did they accept the influence and came to the same conclusion because they agree? In a way, the first is corruption and the latter is lobbyism.

    It’s a fine line and extremely difficult to tell apart from the outside. Which is why there’s so many rules and regulations for accepting favours for politicians and people in power (at least in the EU).

  7. d4m1ty Avatar

    Grey area. You can do this without having to say a word, and that is the problem. Law requires intent and the prosecution must show intent.

    Me taking out my friend who just happens to be a senator is just the state of the scenario. They know I am there for one hand washes the other. I know I am there for that too, but can anyone else prove it? No.

    We are not going to say anything of the sort because that would be bribery. So we are going to chat about life and you off hand mention about a company your brother in law is working on that does X and X happens to be something a bill on the floor will affect. He doesn’t need to say it, but I know what is being asked of me and then I offhand mention about Y needing some investors and they know what that means and then not us start making all that happen after we talk to our PAs when we leave lunch.

  8. doghouse2001 Avatar

    I’d say wining and dining to influence a business transaction is like handing out coupons, and it’s fine and par for the course. It’s like influencing someone to buy from your dealership instead of the one across the road. But when it’s placing people where they don’t belong, cheating other people of opportunity even if they’re better qualified it’s bribery. What you’re suggesting is clearly bribery.

    Of course I work for a federal government where we have to declare even the swag we take home from conferences and are outright forbidden from taking home expensive items like cameras and drones, to avoid any image of bribery, so we’re a little sensitive to that.

  9. Waylander0719 Avatar

    This is more relevant every day.

    https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3344

    It becomes bribery when something of material value is sufficient to alter their judgement or outcome. If you have them over for a nice dinner and your argument persuades them it wasn’t bribery, if the nice steak and bottle of win persuade them it was.

    Proving either of those in court is very very difficult, especially for low dollar amounts.