EUROPE - New forms of bribe have emerged which now include payments into a pension fund, participants at an anti-corruption seminar learned this week.
Speaking at the Anti-Corruption Summer School in Austria, Martin Kreutner head of the Federal bureau for internal affairs at the Austrian interior ministry told colleagues and scientists "higher developed countries see higher developed forms of corruption".
Kreutner said he had recently encountered a case in which someone received a backhander in the form of overseas payments into a pension fund.
"It is not always the proverbial 'brown envelope' being pushed across the table or the briefcase which is exchanged in a dark alley, there are quite different forms of bribery," Kreutner told IPE.
"In order to cover the tracks, the money might be paid into a pension fund with the name of the beneficiary being deposited in a sealed envelop with a solicitor," Kreutner explained.
"In this case, it is very hard for us to find out who the beneficiary is unless it is by some coincidence. His name is only disclosed five, 10 or many more years later when the payments go out."
Kreutner stressed this was only one example and that similar forms of bribery include life insurance contracts, anonymous bank accounts or payments for private school education for the beneficiary's - possibly even unborn - children.
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