Hello and welcome to another M-Lex podcast. My name's James Panicki. I'm M-Ex's

Australasian managing editor coming to you from our offices in Sunny Melbourne in Australia. Thank you very much for

your company. Today we're talking about greasing the wheels, the cash that's required to get business

done in developing countries. We're not talking about bribes here, although for many that distinction

is indeed academic. This is a story about facilitation payments, those small amounts

of money that companies spend to get officials to hack through red tape on their behalf. Under US and

Australian foreign bribery laws, these payments are 100% legit. In some cases, they're even tax

deductible. But around the world, there's a growing

regulatory push to ban them outright. M-Mex has just published an article on this global

trend, and we've availed ourselves of our team of bribery and corruption reporters from around

the world, including Mark Bacchetti in Washington and Ben Lucas and Martin Coyle in London.

Chairman of this reporting board, however, was Phoebe Sears, our regional correspondence.

The region in question is the Asia Pacific and Phoebe joins me now from our offices in Hong Kong.

Hello, Phoebe.

Hi, James.

Phoebe, firstly, let's clarify what is indeed meant by facilitation payments.

Right, yes. So when we're talking about facilitation payments, what we're actually talking about is a defence to the law against foreign bribery.

So as you said, in the US and in in Australia where these payments are allowed, what we're

actually saying is that it's a full defence to the foreign bribery offence if you can show that

your benefit or your payment was indeed a facilitation payment. Now for that defence to apply,

the payment has to be typically minor in value and made to expedite

a routine government service. It can't be to influence an official to make a decision in your

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