Donations to the City Welcome

I just got back from dinner with Karim (name changed to protect the guilty), a guy/company that sells a lot of equipment to the City of Kabul. Things like trucks and bulldozers and front end loaders—pretty serious stuff—Tonka on steroids.

Anyway, Karim is representing a big company so Tom, who is with me, says ‘do you ever do any CSR—you know, Corporate Social Responsibility?”  

“What do you mean?” Karim says. He speaks broken English but fluent Dari and Russian, so it seems he didn’t understand.

“Well, like donations,” Tom says.

“Oh yes, I made a donation of a Mercedes 380 E to one official,” Karim says.

Ok, so we may have a ways to go to get folks to understand the difference between and bribe and a donation.

Karim was pretty straight all night. He negotiates deals directly with the Municipality—no bids needed. He tells them the kind of equipment they need. It is all negotiated personally with Municipal officials. Bribes are rolled up into the purchase price. Often times it isn’t money, but trips out of the country that are most attractive. When it is money, it is around 5% of net—which is better than the guys in Kunduz, who get more like 7%. And the Director (Department Head) that we are dealing with most?  “He is my friend”, says Karim, “but he is greedy”.

He says he will be happy to provide the equipment we need—but warns that we should stay away from the Department Head, as things will get expensive.