Mills, a former legal adviser to Berlusconi, denies any wrongdoing including allegations against him that he had been paid a bribe by the late Carlo Bernasconi, one of Berlusconi’s aides. “I’ve handed over all my files to the [British] police,” he told the FT.

Mills said he had already handed over to Italian magistrates “copious evidence” that “completely disproved” the claims. “This is, I hope, the last act of an investigation that has now been going on since 1995.”

Also on Friday one of the world's largest drugs companies Abbott Laboratories, was suspended from the UK pharmaceutical industry's trade association after three employees improperly entertained doctors at a lap dancing club, a greyhound track and at the Wimbledon tennis championship.

Legal and illegal bribery

The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) is accused of inflating the prices on its wheat contracts, extracting money from the UN's Iraq account, and kicking the extra funds back to Saddam's regime via front companies.

When giving evidence to the official Cole inquiry, former AWB Managing Director Andrew Lindberg used the words "I don't know" and "I don't recall" more than 200 times.

His behaviour prompted an exasperated senior counsel to say: "Are you a complete fool, Mr Lindberg?"

He replied: "I am not a fool."

This type of bribery is clearcut. It involves a direct monetary value.

Last week, the New York Times reported on documents filed in a lawsuit against Medtronic, one of America's largest medical device makers, with $10 billion in annual sales.

A prominent surgeon in Wisconsin was paid $400,000 a year by Medtronic for a consulting contract requiring him to work just eight days. Another doctor in Virginia received nearly $700,000 in consulting fees from Medtronic for the first nine months of 2005.

These doctors work in a growing field, complex back surgery, and this makes them particularly valuable to the spinal-implant division of Medtronic. In recent years, the company has spent tens of millions of dollars on consulting contracts and other types of payments to them and numerous other prominent surgeons, according to papers filed as part of a whistle-blower lawsuit. The suit contends that some of these payments were made to attract or retain the doctors' business.

The New York Times says that a spreadsheet compiled by Medtronic for a June 2003 meeting in Dana Point, California, indicated what Medtronic hoped to accomplish with each doctor attending an event. This list of 230 or so doctors included an estimate of the dollar value of the devices each doctor used in surgery, including the value of the devices made by Medtronic. One doctor is described as "a 100 percent compliant M.S.D. customer," while others were cited for "special attention." M.S.D. referred to Medtronic Sofamor Danek, the largest competitor in the spinal device market.

A surgeon in Phoenix, who used an estimated $400,000 in devices, favoured a rival maker, Spinal Concepts, the spreadsheet said. Company representatives were urged to make overtures to him. "M.S.D. corporate involvement at this program," it said, "would help us earn a bigger share of his business on a grand scale."

I recall hearing an Irish medical consultant on a radio interview, insiting that his judgement would not be influenced by a trip to a conference paid by a pharmaceutical company. The trip to an interesting location, may have also included his partner because its important for the supplier to connect with the person at a personal level.

Bribes come in many forms and there is a return. The individual greasing the palm expects a payback and is not usually disappointed.

So when an individual in a position to provide business accepts a corporate ticket to say the upcoming Ryder Cup 2006 event at Ireland's K Club this summer, it will be proffered with the expectation of a future payback. Inducements are not given for past business as eaten bread is soon forgotten.

The Financial Times reported this week that City investment banks in London, flushed with record earnings are snapping up most of the corporate hospitality packages available to British companies for this summer's World Cup in Germany.

The London banks have already secured about 20,000 tickets, more than 70 per cent of the corporate packages being sold in the UK.

The FT says that Champagne and fine-dining packages range from €900 (£618) for a single match to as much as €300,000 for a luxury corporate box holding 10 people.

In Germany, 80 per cent of the total of 350,000 corporate tickets are available for local companies and the biggest bank Deutsche Bank heads the buyers' list. Seven-game packages priced at €15,000, which would allow a punter to follow England all the way to the final, have already been sold out.

Freeloading at the World Cup is legalised bribery and socially acceptable. The recipients of the largesse would likely regard a story about Nigerian policemen setting up a traffic checkpoint in Lagos to supplement their meagre wages, as repulsive and symptomatic of the depressing corruption that bedevils the Developing World.

Iraq Oil-for-Food Program

More than 2,200 companies, including major firms like DaimlerChrysler, Siemens, Volvo and Atlas Copco, made illicit payments totalling $1.8 billion to Saddam Hussein's government during the U.N. oil-for food program, a report published last October said.

Every resident in Iraq received a monthly ‘food basket’ rations under the Oil-for-Food Program Photo Credit: UN

Three Irish companies are on the bribery list. Nycomed Imaging AS paid $759,000 on sales of $8.7m and Pentag Power Transmission Systems Limited paid $59,000 on sales of $2.9m.

Bula Resources, which was chaired by former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds, sold €4,925,580 of Iraqi oil and paid kickbacks to the Iraqi government of €251,961. The report says that Bula shareholder and anti-Iraq sanctions campaigner, Raid el Taher, was a beneficiary of the Bula deal.

The investigation found that the Bula Resources' payments to the Iraqi government were made through a company called Ambertey Assocides and routed through the Jordan National bank and a bank called the Fransabank.

The U.N.-established Independent Inquiry Committee, headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, named politicians in Russia, France, Britain, Italy and other countries who were given favours by Saddam in his quest to get 1990 U.N. sanctions lifted.

The program, which began in December 1996 and ended in 2003, was geared towards easing the impact of U.N. sanctions imposed in 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to pay for food, medicine and other civilian goods.

The Atlas Copco Group is a global industrial group of companies headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Revenues for 2005 totaled BSEK 55 (€5.9 billion). The Group employs more than 25 000 people and manufactures products in 49 production facilities in 16 countries.

"It was the mother of all humanitarian programs," Volcker told a news conference, parodying Saddam's threat that countries who opposed him in the 1991 Gulf War would face "the mother of all battles."

The report said that under the program Iraq sold a total of $64.2 billion of oil to 248 companies, of which 139 paid illicit surcharges.

In turn some 3,614 companies sold $34.5 billion of humanitarian goods to Iraq and the report said 2,253 paid kickbacks. The total that Iraq made from the bribes paid by companies, which were registered in 66 countries, was $1.8 billion.

Volcker said this was far less than the nearly $11 billion Saddam made in smuggled oil sales outside of the program. Some of this was with the knowledge of the U.N. Security Council, which was supposed to supervise the operation.

The report targeted U.N. officials for a lack of oversight and said Security Council members took little action when U.N. oil experts passed on their concerns.

In addition, the French owned BNP-Paribas bank, which held the escrow account for the program, did not disclose evidence of corruption in its possession, the report said.

Preferential treatment was given to companies in France, Russia and China, all veto-holding members of the Security Council, who were more favourable to lifting the 1990 sanctions compared to the United States, Britain and Japan.

More than 18m barrels of oil were allocated either directly in the name of George Galloway, the UK Respect MP, or in the name of Fawaz Zureikat, a Jordanian businessman and one of his associates.

Surcharges of more than $2m were levied on four contracts corresponding to allocations for the benefit of Galloway and his charity campaign. Burhan al-Chalabi, a UK-based Iraqi businessman, received an Iraqi oil allocation, which he told an Iraqi official was to support Galloway’s campaign. Fortum, the company he nominated to purchase his allocations, paid him commissions worth $472,000. In April 2000, Fortum (in the name of Neste) made a donation of £6,750 to the Mariam Appeal, Galloway’s charity.

Fortum states there was no connection between its contract under the programme and its donation.

Soon after each deposit, a series of payments totalling $120,000 were transferred from Chalabi’s company’s account to Amineh Abu Zayyad, Galloway’s former wife. Both Galloway and Abu Zayad have denied receiving or soliciting any proceeds from sales of Iraqi oil.

Reaction of Top European Companies

Volvo, the Swedish truckmaker, said last month that a few executives involved in dealings criticised by the Volcker investigation into the Iraqi kickback program, had left the company.

Marten Wikforss, a spokesman, said that several employees in the group's construction equipment subsidiary had been disciplined for not raising questions about possible bribery by an agent helping it to secure deals with the former Iraqi regime between 2000 and 2001 under the

"We found out that it was the agents, a Jordanian company called International Engineering Group (IEG), that paid them. We ceased to work with them already in 2002," said Wikforss. But he added: "We think a handful of people [within Volvo Construction Equipment] should have suspected that the agent might pay kickbacks. A couple of them have left the company and Leif Johansson, our chief executive, has stressed to those remaining the importance of sticking to our company's code of conduct."

German-American car and truck manufacturer DaimlerChrysler has suspended at least six managers over the bribery allegations, according to the Financial Times.

Quoting "people close to the carmaker", the paper said between six and nine senior managers had been suspended after an internal investigation.

Volcker said that the Swedish Engineering group Atlas Copco paid kickbacks from both its Construction and Mining Division in Sweden and Airpower, its huge air compressor manufacturing division, in Antwerp, Belgium. Airpower paid $1.3 million on sales of $15m while Atlas Copco CMT paid an undisclosed amount in respect of a contract for $500,000.

In a statement, Atlas Copco said that Atlas Copco Airpower in Belgium has been subject to an investigation by the Committee, both in terms of responding to written questions and a meeting with investigators. The processes for the contract handling under the Program, all formally approved by the UN for payment by Letter of Credit, have been explained in detail.

Internal investigations have verified that there were no payments made to the Iraqi Government by Atlas Copco. Atlas Copco has strongly objected to the assumption made by the Committee indicating a responsibility for the activities of the agent in Iraq at the time.

Atlas Copco will continue its investigation of this matter and take this opportunity to stress that payments by Atlas Copco of the nature now in question are in direct conflict with the Atlas Copco Group’s written Business Code of Practice, and are never tolerated.

The $2.9 billion Saudi Strategic Oil Storage Project was the largest capital project in the Middle East in the 1990's. Atlas Copco paid commissions in respect of equipment supplies for the project.

Reaction of Irish Companies

Bula Resources (Holdings) PLC is in liquidation. 

The Irish High Court ordered that the company's sole remaining director, Omar Yazigi, submit a sworn Statement of Affairs to the High Court by 5 April 2004 . Such a sworn Statement of Affairs has to be in a statutory format, and it should list all of the company's assets and creditors.

Yazigi delivered to the Liquidator Jim Stafford, on 8 December 2004, the sworn Statement of Affairs, a summary of which I set out below:

Detail of the unsecured creditors who are shown to be owed in excess of €100,000:

The Sunday Independent reported in 2004 that Irish broadcaster Bill O'Herlihy, a public relations executive, has confirmed that his fees for lobbying Irish politicians and Government officials to lift sanctions on Iraq were paid by Bula Resources.

O'Herlihy was hired by Iraqi businessman Riad el Taher between 1998 and 2000, after introductions were made by Brid Rosney, the former special adviser to President Mary Robinson.

The newspaper reported that between 1998 and 2000, El Taher used the services of O'Herlihy's PR firm to seek to influence several high-profile Irish politicians to support the campaign to lift sanctions.

Former Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds

An estimated €80,000 was paid to the O'Herlihy PR during that period, or around €3,000 a week. O'Herlihy told the Sunday Independent that his company's fees were paid by Bula Resources, although he thought the final bill was closer to €50,000.

As part of the campaign, several Irish politicians visited Iraq in 1998 and in 2000. El Taher has said that the politicians paid their own way.

Former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds confirmed that he had visited Iraq in 1998 for humanitarian, rather than for political or economic reasons.

"I spoke out against how the sanctions were affecting children. There were hundreds of them dying every month at the time," he said.

The Sunday Independent says that in March 1999, Reynolds became chairman of Bula when the board was restructured and four members resigned.

Some time after Reynolds' visit to Baghdad in 1998, El Taher became a director of Bula.

Bula terminated its consultancy contract with El Taher in March 2002. He had been employed to oversee Bula's bid for a drilling licence in the Block 4 oilfield in Iraq.

Albert Reynolds has said that he was unaware that Riad el Taher was selling oil on behalf of Saddam Hussein's regime

Petrel Resources

David Horgan, Chief Executive Petrel Resources

"Basically, the Oil for Food Program corrupted just about everyone who came into contact with it," David Horgan, the chief executive of the Irish oil exploration company Petrel Resources, told the UK paper The Daily Telegraph in 2003.

Before the fall of Saddam Hussein, Petrel had signed a working agreement to explore Block 6 in the Western Desert. Iraq has known reserves of 123 billion barrels, the second largest repository in the world after Saudi Arabia which is believed to hold 265 billion barrels. But most of Iraq’s oil is in the east of the country. The Western Desert has hardly been explored. The Saddam Hussein authorities were keen for new exploration rather than the reworking of existing but run-down fields.

The Daily Telegraph says that the basic flaw in the programme was that the Iraqis could set the price at which the oil was sold to traders.

That gave the Iraqis scope to sell oil at below the market price, allowing middlemen to make an inflated profit when they sold it on.

This profit would then be split with the Iraqi oil ministry. It was a nice and substantial earner for everyone directly involved, though the Iraqi people saw less food and medicine than was their due.

As one example, in November 2000 Petrel flew a plane loaded with food and medical supplies provided by the Irish government into Iraq under the Oil for Food scheme. Its reward from the Iraqi regime was an oil "uplift', or the right to export a tanker full of crude oil from Iraq and find a buyer on the international market.

"SOMO, the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation, would offer the oil at around $20 a barrel for a tanker load of 2m barrels," says Horgan. "The Iraqis would always price the oil at about 60 cents a barrel less than you could sell it on for. So there would be a wide margin of about $1.2m on every tanker that you would have to share with the ministry.

"You would pay 10 per cent of your share, around $60,000, upfront to an account in Oman controlled indirectly through intermediaries by the Iraqi oil ministry," he says. "That 10 per cent was refundable in case you got cold feet. It was all very businesslike.

"You would then find a refiner to buy the load. It would be one of the big oil companies, which would give you a refiner's letter that would be used to authorise the release of the oil. The refiner would send a tanker to Mina al-Bakr in southern Iraq and the balance of around $40m would be paid into the UN's account.

"You would then receive, perfectly legally, your commission from the refiner and pass half of it, less the 10 per cent you'd already paid, to the Iraqis through the account in Oman."

Horgan says that, after the scheme was explained to him by Iraqi officials, he declined to accept the uplift because he could not find a legal way of doing the deal.

Sweden and bribery

In the mid-1980's, the Indian Government agreed a $1.3bn deal with the Swedish arms company Bofors to supply 400 155mm artillery howitzers. The deal saved the ailing company that was once owned by Alfred Nobel. 

However, reports soon emerged in India that huge bribes had been paid to members of the Congress Party including the Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi.

In Sweden, the political fallout prompted the country's multinational companies to review the payment of bribes, usually referred to using the euphemism "commissions." 

The group management announced that the system of operating accounts at the headquarters in Stockholm for subsidiaries, which were used for both legitimate purposes and the payment of commissions, would end.

However, from the early 1990's commissions still continued to be paid in relation to equipment supplies for Saudi Arabia's Strategic Oil Storage Project.

The Saudi Government has invested more than SR11 billion ($2.9 billion) to build underground storage caverns in Riyadh, Jeddah, Abha, Madinah and Qassim that will reportedly hold more than 12 million barrels of oil and refined products. The project includes a more than 700-km aboveground pipeline system to connect the underground sites with Saudi Aramco bulk plants and refineries. The Abha unit is linked to the product distribution center in Jizan by a 245-km pipeline, part of which passes through 10 km of tunnels.

Last year, the New Delhi high court dismissed charges against the Swedish arms manufacturer, of paying bribes on the $1.3bn sale of 400 howitzers to India in 1986.

"No case can be proceeded against the Hindujas or the Bofors company in the absence of original documents," the judge said. "I quash the framing of charges by the chief metropolitan magistrate against the Hinduja brothers and the Bofors AB."

The court criticised India's top criminal investigation agency for failing to produce any credible evidence to substantiate its original claims.

The judge said evidence from the federal prosecuting agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on which the prosecution case was built, was "useless and dubious material" since its authenticity could not be verified.

The wealthy Hinduja brothers had long maintained that the money paid into Swiss bank accounts was part of a consultancy deal, not a kickback. Their lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, told the Guardian newspaper that his clients had made the mistake of not being totally open to begin with. "It was their mistake, it made them look as if they were trying to obstruct the investigation both here and abroad. But one should still ask why the case continued for so long," Mr Jethmalani said.

In 2004, Rajiv Gandhi was posthumously cleared of any wrongdoing.

Conclusion

Corruption continues to be a growth industry.

While bribery involving the exchange of money, has likely decreased in advanced societies, legal bribery such as World Cup freebies, is thriving. However, money exchange is still extensive.

In the US, the 20 per cent take that hedge fund principals can make from income growth, has prompted payments to medicial researchers to reveal sensitive information on clinical trials, that is in breach of confidentiality agreements.

Last year, The Seattle Times reported that doctors testing new drugs are sworn to keep their research secret until drug companies announce the final results. But elite Wall Street firms — looking to make quick profits — have found a way to harvest these secrets:

They pay doctors to divulge the details early.

A Seattle Times investigation found at least 26 cases in which doctors have leaked confidential and critical details of their ongoing drug research to Wall Street firms.

The practice involves doctors at top research universities from UCLA to the University of Pennsylvania, and powerful financial firms including Citigroup Smith Barney, UBS and Wachovia Securities.

In 24 of the 26 cases, the firms issued reports to select clients with detailed information obtained from doctors involved in confidential studies. The reports advised clients whether to buy or sell a drug stock.

The practice of selling drug secrets, The Times found, is being driven by hedge funds, the largely unregulated investment pools that cater to the super-rich. Hedge funds can make money with aggressive strategies that exploit quick price swings in stocks, and the volatile biotech industry provides many such opportunities.

A single drug's prospects can determine whether a small biotech company's stock soars or plummets, so any inside information provides a potent investing edge.

Such information is so valuable that elite investors pay up to $1 million a year to firms known as matchmakers, which pair Wall Street firms with doctors involved in ongoing drug research. Gerson Lehrman Group, the largest matchmaker, claims to have 60,000 doctors available to speak to Wall Street, double the number from three years earlier.

Some American companies operating in Ireland have explicit policies banning suppliers providing gifts or inducements to staff. However, that is an exception.

Given the huge amounts spent by the Irish public sector for example, there is a strong incentive for suppliers to invest in legal bribery - corporate entertainment.

The current scandal in Washington D.C. involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff highlights how in a political system where campaign finance is everything, bribery has been defined out of existance. A US blogger says that bribery scandals surface about once a generation because they only break into the daylight because the principals are so imbecilically intoxicated by money and power they succeed at the impossible: They get themselves snared in the trammels of the law.

Speaking at the opening of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel said: "Between 4 and 6 percent of all costs for small and mid-size companies in Germany goes into red tape...We must learn to measure the cost of bureaucracy."

The wage slaves of business lobby groups such as Ireland's IBEC, often express similar sentiments but steer clear of putting an onus on business to clean up its own act.

In the advanced industrial societies, the close relationship between sport and corporate entertainment, has eclipsed the brown envelope but the impact is exactly the same.

Until, rampant bribery in the Developed World, whether it be excessive corporate entertainment or paying for inside information, is controlled, hand-wringing about corruption in Developing Countries will be simply hypocrisy.