What can Bilfinger teach Olympic sponsors?

Abstract

Bilfinger SE (Bilfinger) is a leading international engineering and services group (Bilfinger.com, 2015), and was a local sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The company is accused of paying bribes through its subsidiary company, Mauell, (dw. com, 2015) to public officials in Brazil for contracts related to the 2014 World Cup (Cassin, 2015). The corruption allegations relate to orders to equip security command centers at twelve host cities during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil (dw.com, 2015). Because Brazil hosted the 2014 FIFA World Cup and will host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, companies need to consider the risks of many international anti-corruption laws, such as Brazil’s anti-corruption law commonly referred as The Clean Companies Act and other applicable anticorruption law like the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Rogers, et. al, 2014). This paper will analyze the Bilfinger case involving corruption activity at the 2014 FIFA World Cup and offer insights for sponsors of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.