Introduction
Titan set up a joint venture with a government company in the West of Africa, in Benin, in 1998 to build a wireless telephone network. The firm hired a man as its local agent, who was known as a business adviser to Benin's president, Mathieu Kerekou.
From 1999 to December 2001, Titan paid more than $3.5 million to this agent, including $2 million that was falsely billed as consulting services but actually was used for the president's re-election campaign. In 2000, Titan demanded an increase from 5% to 20% in the fees it charged for supervising the project, but this was turned down by the state telecommunications office of Benin. One year later, during the preparations for the presidential elections held in March 2001, Titan began to make 'social payments' in Benin. Some of the money was used to reimburse the agent's purchase of campaign T-shirts and to pay for a $1,850 pair of earrings for the president's wife.
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English: New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, N...Through out this paper, we will try to understand why Titan was accused of bribery and what this accusation means. In order to comprehend the situation, it is necessary to explain what bribery and corruption are and why they are prohibited. Thanks to these explanations, we will able to analyze Titan's case and expose the laws that the firm is confronted with. Finally, we will see how we can resolve, or at least limit, the problem of bribery throughout the world.
Scope of research
In order to find a case that corresponded to a topic which was covered during the seminar, I started out by looking for articles which talked about corruption. When I came upon an article that seemed to cover international business law, the Titian case, I continued to search for related articles.
Most of the articles...