Facilitation Payment

These payments are sometimes called grease or speed money. They are not meant to win a contract or change a decision, only to move a routine step along. Law treats them differently. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has a narrow exception for them, while the UK Bribery Act and the laws of many other countries have none, so the payment is simply a bribe. Many multinational firms ban them outright, with a limited exception where a person's safety is in danger. Regulators and anti-corruption bodies have also warned about their corrosive effect: small payments teach officials to expect more, make delay a source of income, and widen into larger bribes. Guidance and enforcement notes on the subject usually stress that size does not make a payment lawful. Facilitation payments often surface in expense claims coded as 'local charges', which is where auditors go looking.

A freight forwarder's agent is told that a shipment of spare parts will sit in port for two weeks unless he gives the customs clerk 50 in cash. The goods are cleared and the duty is correct, so the payment buys only speed. Under the company's policy this is prohibited. The agent declines, escalates to the compliance team, and the forwarder asks the port authority to use its formal fast-track service instead.