Across Asia, sex is a handy form of bribery

BANGKOK — As bribes go, sexual favors have their advantages.

Seeking influence with a powerful government official? Fearful of getting caught? Then sex bribes are ideal.

Potentially traceable gifts, such as BMWs or cash-stuffed suitcases, can land both the briber and the corrupt official in prison. But influencing officials with sex — a common practice across Asia — produces very little physical evidence.

And in the emerging economies of China and Vietnam, it’s not even illegal.

Yet.

“In places like China and Vietnam, the penal code says bribery must involve money or goods. It has to be physical,” says Liao Ran, who monitors Asia for Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog group based in Germany.

The typical sex bribe involves a businessman treating an official to a night at a bathhouse stocked with prostitutes, Ran says. “Businessmen invite officials to a sauna. The officials go home happy. And nothing is put inside their pockets,” he says. “There’s no direct link between the payment and the favor.”

But in Vietnam, officials under the ruling communist party say they’re seriously considering the criminalization of sex bribes. A senior Ministry of Justice official tells Vietnam’s Thanh Nien news outlet that this is a “new crime that merits thorough discussion.”

Currying favor with officials through sex is hardly new. Nor is it unique to Vietnam. It’s an entrenched practice across Asia, from snowy South Korea to tropical Indonesia, and few Asian nations pursue sexual bribery cases with much vigor.

Ran believes they should. Almost every country on Earth — minus a smattering of troubled spots such as Somalia and North Korea — has signed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.

It’s essentially a promise to conform corruption laws across the globe coupled with a vow to prosecute the corrupt. (The fact that most infamously corrupt countries such as Myanmar, Yemen and Russia signed the convention indicates these promises are easily broken.)

But some countries don’t even concede that offering sex for favors constitutes a bribe. The UN anti-corruption convention forbids authorities from offering “undue advantage” or “influence” to another person. But it never mentions sex per se.

That leaves each nation’s powerful lawmakers — apt to be predominately male — to decide whether or not influential businessmen should be allowed court them with sexual favors.

Vietnam’s decision to scrutinize sex bribes is uncommon in Asia. Even Indonesia, a massive nation under the sway of conservative Islam, appears unwilling to pursue it. As one senior Indonesian anti-corruption official lamented in 2013: “An act of bribery requires the bribe to come in material form. So where does this leave sexual favors?”

The exception in Southeast Asia is the tightly controlled city-state of Singapore, which just doled out five years in prison to a businessman who courted soccer referees with prostitutes.

Some Western conglomerates have allegedly indulged in sex-for-favor swaps. Executives from the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline are accused of accepting cash and the paid company of attractive women in return for business — while also doling out bribes themselves, according to Chinese authorities. In 2014, the firm was fined for the cash handouts. But the alleged sex acts were not deemed criminal.

Though most sex bribes involve prostitution, Ran says, banning sex for favors will also effectively ban another practice: sleeping your way to the top. But that’s a good thing, he says, as women in the male-dominated world of Asian officialdom often have little power to resist bosses who want to exchange sex for a promotion.

“These women are quite marginalized. It’s a patriarchal society,” Ran says. “If a government official demands that a subordinate offer sex, I don’t think she can always afford to say no.”