Clean tech is new: solar, wind, biofuels, water purification. It’s exciting, and both the financial and the green communities are optimistic about the possibilities. And yet the industry runs the very ordinary risk of getting bogged down in perhaps the oldest business challenge of all: corruption.
In a nutshell, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prohibits companies and individuals from corruptly paying, offering, or promising to pay anything of value, directly or indirectly, to foreign officials to obtain or retain business or an improper advantage. To comply with the FCPA, clean tech companies must overcome the challenges typical of two of the most bribery-prone sectorsinfrastructure and energyas well as a handful of new challenges.
