Bad apples in a barrel: corruption in organisations / Wan Nailah Abdullah and Roshima Said

Corruption is a corrupted practice and can be defined as the giving, offering, receiving or soliciting, whether directly or indirectly, anything valuable to influence improperly the actions of another party (The World Bank Group, 2016). For instance, a supplier agrees to pay kickbacks to a government senior official through an agent it employs. This agent who is so called a “sub consultant” is given the task to perform "business development and marketing" services but without any deliverables and is actually connected to that senior government official who demands some "commission" from every bidder. This happens because the official has influence over the bidding evaluation process as he or she is in the bidding evaluation committee, thus is able to lead the award of the contract to any bidder who is willing to pay such “commission”. In these circumstances, the supplier tops up the kickback amount in the whole contract value, and pays for it from the funds it receives from the government‟s financed project fund. Thus, this practice artificially inflates the project financing costs, and later the supplier recovers their costs through supplying less expensive and lower quality products.