How exactly does bribery concealment work?

Question

I am specifically asking about the method in this example:

>Exchange of funds through a legitimate business: A firm controlled by a public official pays a large sum of money to an unrelated corporation in return for fictitious invoices for alleged consulting fees. That corporation in turn makes checks payable to one of its corporate officers who then cash the checks with the aid of a bank official. The cash is returned to the first corporation’s officers who include the public official.

So what exactly is happening in this example? I am confused who is being bribed and who is doing the bribing (i.e. who the money is coming from and who the money is going to). It seems like the public official is just bribing himself as the large sum of money comes from his firm only for it to end up back in his pocket. This makes zero sense to me.

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In: 2

Answer 1

As others have said, the listed example is more like embezzlement than bribery.

For bribery, it would go more like this:

Alice wants to build something in a certain part of the city. Doing so requires an exception to the zoning codes in the city. Bob is a city worker who, for whatever reason, can grant those exceptions. Bob’s wife, Carol, owns a business that offers coaching services on working through city bureaucracy.

Alice goes to Bob to ask for an exception. Bob declines to grant the exception, and in passing remarks that there were errors with her proposal that, with a little work, she might be able to overcome and win approval on an appeal. He gives her a list of businesses that might be able to help her with that, which coincidentally includes Carol’s business.

Reading between the lines, Alice hires Carol for her “services.” After finalizing payment, Alice re-submits her proposal and with the “advice” granted by Carol’s business, it’s approved. Of course, the fact that Alice’s payment is pocketed by Carol (Bob’s wife) is just a complete coincidence.

In reality they’d probably use a few more layers to mask the relationship, but that’s the basic idea: Pass the funds through a business as if they’re a legitimate invoice so that a cursory inspection won’t reveal them for the bribe that they are.