Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. And today we're

going to be talking about the Lockheed scandal that dates all the way back to really the early

days of the FCPA and is believed by many to have given the world the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

My guest is Frank Padua.

He is a PhD, of course, and an associate professor of accounting at the Lamar University College of Business.

He is taught previously at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and at Rutgers in New Jersey.

He focuses his research primarily on accounting information systems, accounting

and business pedagogy, sustainability, and accounting history. Frank, thank you so much for joining

me. Thank you for hosting me, Alexandra, and good afternoon to everybody out there.

Why don't you start by bringing everybody up to speed on the nature of the scandal, what happened and how it

came to light? Because although there are some people still in the compliance community,

whose careers date back that far, those people are, you know, increasingly rare. And so a lot of

people know there is an initial link to Lockheed, but don't know the story.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 originated amidst bribery scandals pretty much were

occurring in the backdrop of the Cold War. So we're talking about the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

And as it turns out, the biggest of these bribe payers, according to an talking about the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

And as it turns out, the biggest of these bribe payers, according to an expose by Representative Les Aspen, was Lockheed Corporation.

And as it turns out, there was a list of various firms about 20 or so that were implicated by Representative Aspins' expose,

that were channeling all sorts of bribes and illegal payments to foreign governments

and entities in foreign countries. And as it turns out, most of these firms, or at least the most egregious of these

bribe payers, were aerospace and defense industry firms, among them Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas

and Northrop. I think these are familiar names that people associate with the defense and

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