Telia to Pay Nearly $1B to Settle Uzbek Bribery Claims

How do you get the data? I'm curious because there is a phenomenon here in Prague, Czech Republic, in which there are mostly empty restaurants and stores will obviously have no hope of making rent. Like if you calculate how many customers go inside each day, and you assume they all bought the most expensive item, the total revenue would be less than the cost of rent for the location. Cynical Czechs all say that these companies are fronts for laundering money, but would it be possible for me, as a normal civilian to get hold of documents which would prove that? I thought that the finances of private companies were more or less secrets.

As for the Dutch part. The Dutch daughter companies paid the bribes, which is illegal under Dutch law and this is a settlement with the Dutch Public Prosecutor. Uzbekistan should separately recover that money from the Karimov family.

Agreed it feels a bit weird, but how would you distribute the money directly to the Uzbeki people? I'd imagine if the government of Uzbekistan received the settlement, it would find its' way to Swiss bank accounts rather than the people of Uzbekistan

If the money went to the Uzbeki people no one would enforce the law. The incentive for US/Dutch enforcement is that they get the fine dollars.

The bribe was for a rich and powerful family in Uzbekistan. The US and Dutch authorities didn't like that.

If that is the only way business can be done in Uzbekistan then Telia had no business case in Uzbekistan. It's a no-brainer.

And if you are going to argue with China taking the business, well, let China do the bribery and take the business. The free, open economy will outperform closed corrupted systems in the long run.

how are the situations at all comparable, and is anyone even trying to defend Telia here except you?

Even using a search engine link or private mode doesn't work for me. It asks for cookie consent, but seems to be tracking me before that already, which is illegal here (EU). Unless nobody can read this without a subscription...