IBM has left Russia, officials have lost their trough. About bribes from IBM

Hello.

One of the topics that I wanted to touch upon is the departure of IBM from Russia. I am sure that many people know

remember that IBM stood at the origins of the marketpersonal computers, but due to various errors have not been able to fully realize their potential. A huge corporation with offices in all parts of the world, a kind of corporate monster that is used to working with large companies, mostly state-owned. IBM has chosen B2B, B2G segments, they know how to find an approach to various officials and corporate figures. IBM's business is built on the fact that the company creates mainly computer systems around logistics, data processing and analysis. Before the boom of big data, IBM helped process various data and coped with this task quite well. But business has always had certain specifics, it was not transparent and was based on personal agreements in each country. In Russia, one of the precedents that made a lot of noise was the story of 2006, which well characterizes the business of IBM and the way the company is used to doing business. The Prosecutor General's Office conducted searches at the Moscow office of IBM, as well as at two of the company's distributors, seized documentation and computers. The reason for the visit of the security forces is not a competitive struggle (whom and with whom?), but a banal violation of customs legislation, the creation of tax evasion schemes. Let me remind you that in 2005 the state actively took up whitewashing the electronics market, moving away from schemes for the supply of goods without paying taxes. As a result, we got a transparent market and maximum tax collection, which grew year by year. For IBM, then this story ended more or less gently, the company recorded losses, and nothing more. In my private conversation with one of the employees, a brilliant phrase sounded: “We are so used to solving problems in any country with money that this situation in Russia is complete nonsense.” At that time, the company was accused of tax evasion of $32 million in our country, but the situation somehow resolved itself and came to naught. Suddenly, IBM began to pay taxes to the budget.

IBM, like most Americancorporations, an interesting track record with proven facts of bribing officials and partners around the world. From 1993 to 2000 in Argentina, the company bribed officials to buy an information system for the largest state-owned bank. The value of the contract is 250 million dollars, the price of the right decision is millions of dollars transferred to accounts in Swiss banks. Four high-ranking IBM employees were arrested as part of this case, and ten more were charged. Argentine IBM employees assured that they did everything with the knowledge of the headquarters, the latter claimed that she had never known anything about bribes and that this was the initiative of people who had betrayed their trust. At that time, the American office was able to get out of this story with minimal losses, the fine in the United States amounted to 300 thousand, and then everything calmed down.

From 2004 to 2009 in South Korea and Chinathe company turned to its fullest: bribing officials when they were offered trips overseas at the expense of the company, expensive restaurants, buying gifts in luxury stores. The bribery scheme was put on a grand scale, it involved about a hundred IBM employees in these countries, they wrote memos about who and how to walk out in order to sell equipment and software to the company. In South Korea, the press did not hesitate to write about the proven facts of the transfer of money in packages with the IBM logo, as well as bags from stores, they were transferred by IBM employees to officials in parking lots. Payment for the services of sixteen officials. At that time, they could only prove the amount of 207 thousand dollars for two countries, but the real amount of bribes was clearly higher. In South Korea alone, the company received contracts worth $54 million. Usually the size of the bribe is at least 10% of the contract amount, no one will get dirty for insignificant amounts.

The US Securities Commission appointed for IBM$10 million fine, but found nothing reprehensible in the company's actions! That is, in fact, the SEC admitted, albeit indirectly, that most American companies do everything that way. You need to understand that the ban on bribes usually applies to the home market, but what is happening outside its SEC has always been the last thing to worry about. This is the age-old attitude of Americans to the outside world as to their own colonies, where anything can happen. In the American court around this case, the SEC completely took the position of IBM, the blow to the company could be too serious, so it was justified by all available methods. The scandal was stubbornly hushed up.

Miscellaneous

Affiliate material

Reality and prospects of the IT professions market

What professions are the most popular and highly paid?

Saturday coffee #204

Pour a cup of fragrant Saturday coffee andcheck out the news of the week. Yandex blurs the boundaries on maps, Apple introduced the new MacBook Air, Haval Dargo came out in Russia, and I tested SberBox…

Mercedes-Benz E-class W213 test. The best premium sedan?

The Mercedes-Benz E-class sedan is consistently among the top most popular premium cars on our market, and this applies not only to new cars, but also to used cars, where it is also in demand.

Realme 8 Pro Review (RMX3081)

Updating the flagship of the middle segment: upgraded the camera, refreshed the interface and appearance, but retained many already familiar characteristics. Can the smartphone become the new hit?

In 2013, bribes in Poland, Argentina, Bangladeshand in Ukraine, the latter belonged to the area of responsibility of the Russian office. Every case has been hushed up, and they only became known because the information came from local law enforcement or officials who were outraged by it or were trying to make a name for themselves in the fight against bribes. In a separate article, you can read more and in detail about what bribes caught IBM

And how many stories with bribes remained out of sight? I think that most of them, since statistics say that a small number of such stories are always revealed.

Against the background of such stories, it is impossible to call IBM a respectable company that never breaks the law.

In Russia, IBM had a large office, as itworked with state-owned companies, a vivid example of cooperation can be called Russian Railways, which bought both hardware and software. Several hundred people worked for IBM in various departments, I had to visit the innovation center at 10 Presnenskaya Embankment, and meet with IBM employees in Krylatsky Hills.

The Russian legal entity of the company is "IBMEastern Europe/Asia” or “IBM WEA” for short. There were also several subsidiaries in Russia, for example, the IBM Scientific and Technical Center. The focus on government contracts is normal for IBM, let's look at how this happened in the future. In 2016, the company signed 19 contracts, in 2017 - 16 contracts, in 2018 - only two. The reason was that the competitive environment for IBM in Russia was deteriorating, and the state was looking for effective solutions, it was not ready to invest money in closed systems that had flaws and could be turned off from the outside. In fact, Russia was preparing for what began to happen in the spring of 2022, when many American companies tried to break the systems they had sold earlier and refused to support them. And if we had a large number of systems from IBM, the consequences would be the saddest, but this did not happen, the company's services were gradually abandoned.

In monetary terms, this is clearly seen in revenue.and IBM profits, the company has never been the leader of the Russian market, was not among the ten largest, hung on the border of the second and third dozen IT companies. IBM received the largest income in Russia in 2015 - 5.6 billion rubles. In 2019, revenue was 10.69 billion rubles, profit - 2.9 billion rubles. In 2020, revenue was 11.6 billion rubles, profit - 3.6 billion rubles. In 2021, revenue is 10.5 billion rubles, profit is 4.2 billion rubles. At the same time, it should be noted that part of the contracts was withdrawn from Russia, about half of the money went directly to IBM through various schemes. So, according to the CEO of the company, the turnover of IBM in Russia in 2021 amounted to about 22.1 billion rubles, although on paper it is two times lower. The explanation is given above.

I have no doubt that IBM for Russia is notwas of particular interest: the lack of unique developments, expensive equipment and software, a peculiar approach to the market. The company historically occupied a place in the market, but did not provide competitive solutions, and how it achieved sales is also clear. And it was bad both for the country and for business in Russia - we got not the best solutions for a lot of money. The market situation has already changed, the global crisis is growing, and it is impossible to buy such solutions as before, this is a direct road to nowhere. For IBM, business in Russia was gradually ending, as Russian officials, both in corporations and in departments, took a course several years ago to abandon such equipment. They would be happy to buy it, but the risks have grown too much, and in every sense - the main danger was a potential shutdown and the possibility of getting a very real prison term. Old contracts were fulfilled, and most of the partners were not going to renew them. The same Russian Railways actively migrated from IBM solutions to others. And it was not difficult to see that IBM would eventually leave the Russian market voluntarily or involuntarily, or rather, lose a significant part of its operations.

Therefore, in March, the company decidedsuspend all sales, customer service. The reason is simple - it became a convenient reason to leave Russia, to close a direction that would have failed in the short term anyway and could bring problems for the company as a whole. And here is an opportunity to show solidarity, as well as to bury all the inefficiency and at the same time avoid investigations into the practice in Russia. Gone, which means that any accusations that may appear in the public field will be associated with political persecution, and they can be ignored. As far as I'm concerned, it's convenient. Flight IBM was predetermined by other reasons than other American companies. And I believe that the Russian market did not suffer any losses from this. People who worked at IBM can potentially find a new job, there are no difficulties if they are really professional and skillful, Russian companies hire specialists willingly. It’s definitely not necessary to cry about the fact that IBM itself “left Russia”, here, as in the old proverb, a woman with a cart is easier for a mare. It will be easier for us without IBM, and most importantly, the efficiency of our solutions will increase.

And as a cherry on the cake - in June 2022a purchase of almost 800 million rubles from the Russian Treasury, which includes equipment and software from IBM. This is the exit of IBM, when everyone continues to sell and deliver.

Source: t.me/begtin/3950

Dirty business of large corporations on the example of Amazon

How Amazon steals someone else's product design, creates their own things and sells them on their site - the usual dirty business of a large corporation.