This is, quite literally, how every It department is supplied. Some exec gets a BJ and a free trip and you get a terrible product you’re supposed to fit into your infra.
In some he personally got shares.
I guess this executive decided to go a bit beyond the normal practices.
>IBM
Or Fujitsu
The general rule for US corruption is that it is concentrated at the top. Grift at lower levels amounts to stealing from your superiors; you should be getting hand-downs, not going freelance.
But US corruption has moved toward making it all legal at the top level; thus, "cost overruns" and "waste", all indictment-proof, because they are right there in the contract. So on any random tunnel, nuke, or weapons system, 10-25% is for the result and the rest goes discreetly into pockets. Top pockets. Ultimately, the latter motivates the project's organizational sponsors, and the project itself is just cover.
VC firms designate a few winners and lots of loser startups. The losers are then milked, "placing" executives who then spend on designated services. In the '90s these usually included Oracle licenses at $500k and up, a certain "e-commerce platform" (name forgotten), and recruiting agencies. It seems like there are a lot more outfits to siphon money than before.
(They fund losers because they are contractually obliged to place a certain amount of money in a fixed timeframe. When not enough winners show up, thd rest has to be placed on losers. Also, graft.)
This explains so much.
The new things must be cloud, auth, and HR platforms.
...in the US. In Poland IBM was caught bribing a government official a couple years ago.
In the private sector it is not unheard of for a salesperson to drop 5 figures on champagne. If salesman from firm A is willing to give an exec or buyer a night to remember once or twice a year, with booze costing one or two weeks salary before tax, and the salesperson from firm B simply sends a "happy holidays" card once a year, it can easily sway that exec even if they believe they are unbiased.
Also, there is always about 10 times more legacy shit than decent new software in any org. That's the ultimate goal for many companies: not even good (let along best) quality but essential because we built something a decade ago to go with it and no one wants to undo all that convoluted undocumented bs. It's sad and I think tech people like me don't "get" it. But it's actually a much better business model than making good software and competing on price/quality.
I worked for plenty of good and shitty software companies. I've never seen bribery. I have seen shitty companies win because they're bigger or older or what was used last time or more polished at speaking to execs who know nothing. One place I worked at made most of its sales because we were a subsidiary of a stock exchange. So people assumed we were safe and competent (we weren't). "No one gets fired for choosing IBM" AND "No one gets a bonus for choosing something better but less well known, quite the opposite, they have to justify it"
For the really big bribes there are shell companies, which the vendor hires as subcontractor to get "consulting services".
The "CEO" in question is in practice political commissar of the ruling party.