The employee says that half of the tech giant’s salespeople and managers participated in the $200 million annual bribery scheme.
Tech giant Microsoft bribes its customers in the Middle East and Africa in a big way, said Yasser Al-Abd, a 20-year-old employee of the company, who posted his testimony on the Lioness website on Friday.
Al-Abd says the company spends more than $200 million annually on bribery and operates bribery systems in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, and others.
Worse, he says, is that more than half of the managers and salespeople in these regions — up to 70% — are involved in slippery money, and anyone trying to stop the culture of bribery is left out of the deal and ultimately fired from the company. .
Although scams take various forms, it has been the case that governments have paid millions of dollars for programs they never received or “received” significant discounts that were not on a client’s balance sheet; Al-Abed said the missing money was eventually split between Microsoft employees and government officials involved in the settlement, as well as a subcontractor.
“It’s happening on every level. Every leader knows it and supports it,” the former leader told The Verge on Friday. “If you do the right thing, they will definitely not be promoted.” He says he spoke to five other employees who were similarly sanctioned to raise the alarm about the fraud.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice previously investigated allegations that Microsoft took similar kickbacks in Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Thailand, eventually signing a $25.3 million deal with the software company, in exchange for a promise to terminate his business. Contracts with a specific partner.
Although company president Brad Smith later described the bribery as “completely unacceptable” and demanded stricter oversight in a letter to employees, El-Abed said the problem was getting worse, adding that Microsoft was still working on the blacklist. Partner, now only through a broker.
Although the slave was able to intervene in a similar Nigerian bribery case, a leader later approached him to express his displeasure with the act and then ordered him to “turn his head around and leave it as is” if he encounters anything else “suspicious.” There is no doubt that the man has since been discriminated against, kicked out of profitable shops in turn, refused his travel requests, and wanted to undergo a “performance improvement” process due to its ineffectiveness. He refused to do so, which eventually landed him on his job.
This hasn’t stopped Elabd from tracking down more fraud and bribery at Microsoft and its subcontractors. He claims to have documented bribes to Microsoft and its subcontractors from Qatar, Cameroon and South Africa and passed this information directly to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
He said the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice did not appear interested in pursuing the case, despite the evidence being presented three times. For its part, Microsoft blamed the pandemic for failing to prove itself.
Elabd said Microsoft has gained a core monopoly on workplace software on the African continent, noting that governments that work with Microsoft are “splashing millions of public money over unused Microsoft products to enrich select administrators, partners, and employees.”
Microsoft insisted that it had “previously investigated these multi-year allegations and addressed these issues,” Becky Linaburg, vice president and deputy chief compliance and ethics advisor, told The Verge in response to Ellabd’s allegations. The company stressed its commitment to “ethical practices” and said all of its employees should participate in their in-house training on “labor standards,” which will teach them how to report bribery.
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