Although the President is trying to portray the incident as an isolated actofcorruption, many Peruvians are interpreting the scandal as a return to the late 1980s when corruption was endemic.
Microsoft is committed to observing the standards of conduct set forth in the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the applicable anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws of the countries in which we operate.
The warnings follow the introduction earlier this year of the Bribery Act, widely described as the most stringent anti-corruption legislation in the world.
Hardly any European country of note has a law against bribery and corruption similar to American legislation which makes it a criminal act for American companies to offer inducements when tendering for contracts abroad.
By all means, many believe, an enlarged and more representative civil society - ideally a larger, wider group of people from all over the country, not just a bunch of well meaning lawyers and activists from Delhi - should be putting pressure on a stubborn government to act against corruption.