Two issues of corruption being exposed, and the consequences of exposure, are presently exercising the British. One case is old, and one very much in the present. They coincide in today’s discussion because we have learned that Prince Andrew spoke scathingly of those investigating the Saudi case some years ago, while the BBC yesterday broadcast revelations about bribery in FIFA. In common with the target of the noble prince’s ire, the BBC team have been criticised for their exposure.
Any attempt to counter this criticism is met with the exhortation to ‘get real’, to come into the ‘real world’, and so on. Well, as someone with long and varied experience of the real world I understand such a response, but can we be clear on the nature of the reality to which we are urged to genuflect? It is a reality that proclaims it wrong to confront dishonesty, corruption and untrammelled greed because the cost of doing so is too high. In short, the adherence to a moral line has a price higher than we are prepared to pay.
As a realist, I understand that position. All I ask is that we hear no more of the superiority of ‘British values’. The reality is that the British are as ready as any other peoples to stick their snouts in the trough and to collaborate in corruption.
Boadicea's Chariot 
When I was at sea we used to bribe people from customs (yes some British) to stevedores. Never bothered about it. Cash can sometimes get things done fast.
Double standards, Tom that’s what it is!
The Arms business particularly has always been mired in pay-offs, agents’ commissions, bribes, call it what you will. To pretend that the British have not been in it up to their armpits for years, is disengenuous. I think our politicians have already proven themselves as corruptible as any Third World Legislature – talk of “British values” belongs to some pre-war P.G.Wodehouse world I am afraid.
In large parts of the world, business cannot be contracted without a local agent. For his services, he expects and is paid a contractually agreed Agent’s commission. I am not clear whether payment of such commissions by British Exporters is deemed illegal. I cannot imagine it is, or we would be doing no business with the Middle East at all. How the self-appointed guardians of the nation’s morals differentiate between what is an outright bribe, and an Agent’s commission is a mystery. The agent may well be the conduit in some cases for bribing key decision makers, diluting his commission in the process. Is that the sellers’ problem? I don’t know at what point you decide it is morally acceptable to pay an agent’s commission but expect to object to what he does with it…
Whether it is a Rolls Royce or John Brown Engineering turbine contract for a desalination plant, or a BAe export of Jaguar fighter aircraft, there is a Rolls Royce, JBE or BAe local agent somewhere in the buying country, who makes his commission on the deal. It has ever been thus.