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Sometimes the demands for payoffs are presented directly and bluntly. A classic example occurred in 1970 in South Korea, where Gulf Oil has a $300 million investment in refineries and chemical plants. The late S.K. Kim, a power in the ruling Democratic Republican Party, called in Bob Dorsey, then Gulf president, who was visiting Korea. According to Dorsey, Kim "dived right into the matter and told me that we were doing exceedingly well out there and that basically, our continued prosperity depended on our coming up with a ten million [dollar] political contribution to the party." After much haggling, Gulf got away with a $3 million contribution.
In most cases, though, the approaches are much more subtle: bribegiver and receiver never even meet, but deal through middlemen or agents. A company wanting to do business in a country where it is not known may seek out an agent, or an agent may approach it and claim—quite rightly—to know how to land contracts. Working—often luxuriously—on the fringes of the worlds of politics and business, middlemen are the indispensable Mr. Fixits for companies operating in foreign countries. Often natives of the country, the agents are well connected and know their way around the corridors of power as well as around the ski and sun resorts where many deals are born.
Of course, a good agent's role is not restricted to payoffs. He can set up appointments between important government officials and company representatives, help the firm chart its investment strategy, advise it on how to shape its bid and funnel back useful intelligence on government needs. All that is wholly ethical, and thus it often is next to impossible to determine how much of the agent's fee is a legitimate business expense and how much is passed on in bribes—particularly because the client companies have good reason for not trying to find out. If they do not know, they can, with only moderately queasy conscience, treat the agent's fee as a tax-deductible business expense. Then, if bribes become public knowledge, company executives can deny with a straight face having ever knowingly authorized them.
Among the middlemen in the Middle East, no one rates higher than Adnan Khashoggi, a fabulously wealthy Saudi Arabian who jets about his business in a plushly furnished private Boeing 727. He has at one time or another represented, among others, Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon and Chrysler. As Northrop's agent, he stands to collect a fee of $45 million for a single deal to sell fighter planes to Saudi Arabia. Northrop once reported that it had given $450,000 to Khashoggi to pass on to two Saudi air force generals; Khashoggi says he pocketed the money to "punish" Northrop for thinking it could bribe the Saudis.