Microsoft to pay $26mn in anti-bribery case

San Francisco: Software giant Microsoft is reportedly set to pay $26 million to settle allegations that its four subsidiaries violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The settlement comes to resolve charges that its employees bribed government officials in Hungary.

The company as a corporation, however, was not involve in any corrupt practice but a group of staffers in Hungary sold Microsoft products to local resellers at a discounted prices, and those partners, in turn, sold the same products to the Hungarian government at high prices. 

They used the difference to bribe Hungarian government officials, said a report in mspoweruser.com on Monday.

The settlement comes after a report published in 2018 in Wall Street Journal said that the US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating whether Microsoft sold discounted software to Hungarian middlemen who sold it to the country’s government at inflated prices from 2013-2015, according to the Gizodo.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has fired its staffers who were involved in this bribery act and has also terminated the contracts with the resellers involved.