The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have aggressively enforced the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act1 in recent years, famously collecting billions of dollars in penalties, in part on a theory that bribery is not a victimless crime.
Corruption has been linked to all manner of social and economic harm.2 Nations, their governments and their people, suffer in myriad ways: natural resources may be stolen when corrupt officials are paid to look the other way, and contracts may be awarded to subpar companies or may prove more expensive than otherwise warranted. The World Bank has estimated that over $1 trillion in bribes are paid each year, and the World Economic Forum puts the yearly cost of corruption at approximately $2.6 trillion, or 5 percent of global gross domestic product.3 Yet, despite all the injury, the main victims of corruption—local communities and honest businesses that refuse to pay bribes—rarely see any of the billions of dollars companies pay to resolve corruption cases. Instead, almost all of that money ends up with the U.S. Treasury, a party that typically has suffered little direct harm from the bribery scheme, especially when compared with the harm suffered by other victims.
