"American companies attempting to bring goods into Gaza claim that Israeli officials solicited bribes from them, a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks has revealed."
via Israel | Gaza | WikiLeaks | Julian Assange.
This info comes from Aftenposten, which is the Norwegian newspaper that reportedly obtained all of the Cablegate cables but not through Julian Assange. So they are not under any agreement-constraints is the thinking. They can release things as quickly as they want and in any order.
The list of corporations that complained to the State Department is apparently quite long. Those named in the article include "Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Caterpillar, Philip Morris, Westinghouse, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Aramex and Dell." So, if this is true, then within those corporations, there are executives who knew of the bribes. Why was this kept quiet by those corporations?
It is reported that the bribes were thousands of dollars per truck load and that the longer the time when goods were restricted the higher would be the bribe demand once the blockage was lifted or partially lifted.
It would therefore constitute a terribly unethical and immoral activity on top of the blockade.
Why would the corporations lie to the State Department or why would the State Department make up something like this? It would seem that the complaints are very likely credible. One would suppose that the corporations would likely have strange financial-accounting records concerning them because technically, it is illegal for US corporations to pay such bribes whether reported or not to the State Department.
Think of it. The Gazans were cutoff for a very long period. The goods in the stores were too highly priced or not what the Gazans either needed or wanted. Then the Israelis were pressured to open up the flow of goods more, and they held out their hands for larger bribes or the Gazans would suffer more and the prices of the goods would remain higher than otherwise in any case if those corporations built the bribes into their pricing.
Disgusting!
WIKILEAKS SERIES Information
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