Bribery and Corruption Casebook: The View from Under the Table

CHAPTER 38

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MERIC BLOCH

Dan Jackson was a man going places. There seemed to be no limit to where he would go in the company. He had recently been promoted to corporate vice president in the IT department at NyTel USA. NyTel paid him a good salary with an annual bonus. Dan just completed the company’s Senior Leadership Training course, a two-week seminar in Lillehammer, Norway, where NyTel executives are groomed for advancement. The walls of Dan’s offices were covered with photos of him with NyTel big shots. The credenza behind his desk was littered with knickknacks from his world travels and Lucite paperweights commemorating his big IT projects.

Dan had come a long way from Beaufort, South Carolina. The son of a career Marine officer, Dan spent his childhood moving from one military base to another. After his father retired from the Marines, the family settled in Beaufort when his father accepted a job teaching military history at a nearby college.

Major Jackson ran his family like a military commander. The kids were expected to obey orders without question. Resistance was futile. “When my father told us to do something, the only option was to salute and carry on,” Dan was heard to say more than once. Although Major Jackson thought the application of military discipline built character in his children, it left Dan with a constant insecurity that he would never meet his father’s standards.

Dan sought the major’s approval, confident that someday ...