The room was paneled in dark wood. The atmosphere was one of subdued, official inquiry. Carl Kotchian, president of the Lockheed Corporation, one of the world's largest aerospace manufacturers, sat before the Senate Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations. His testimony was not explosive. It was delivered in the flat, precise language of corporate finance.
He admitted to authorizing payments. Approximately three million dollars. The recipient was the office of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. The purpose was to secure the purchase of Lockheed's L-1011 TriStar airliners by All Nippon Airways. He framed it as a necessary cost of business, a 'commission' in a market where such practices were, he implied, the unspoken rule.
The banality of the confession was what shocked. There was no drama, only the dry recitation of invoices, intermediaries, and bank transfers. It was corruption rendered as ledger entries. The fallout, however, was tectonic. In Japan, it triggered a political crisis that led to Tanaka's arrest and the eventual conviction of several officials. It revealed a vast, shadowy network of influence peddling that spanned continents. The Lockheed scandal became a textbook case of multinational bribery, leading directly to the passage of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It all began here, in a quiet hearing room, with a man in a suit explaining, in measured tones, how he paid a bribe.