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The Routine Activity Theory

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Theoretical review The United Nations initiated a program that housed both the companies and the governments, oil for food program. Despite the defined governmental operations by the programme to the signing states, the Australian government was outside the provisions of the reference of the Cole enquiry. The cole enquiry company was sanctioned by the United Nations security department to answer to allegations labelled against the company by the 2004 United Nations report on the oil for food program. The Cole Company was unable to give a formal extermination conducted by the government with respect to the government’s efforts of discouraging bribery from the AWB organisation. The Australian government’s minister did not react to the warnings …show more content…

The routine activity theory has been employed in helping one understand the occurrence of offenses that are related to international bribery. The routine activity theory predicts that, for any criminal act to take place, there is a convergence in both space and time of a motivated offence, the absence of a capable guardian (regulators), and the presence of a suitable target (FELSON, 2003 & YAR, 2005). The analysis of the AWB scandal will consider the three elements together with cultural variability. The routine activity theory is conventionally used in the explanation of the predatory, violent crime where it indicates that normally there is one motivated offender, which varies from a single suitable target. However, when applied to bribery, this theory must be adapted since in the act of bribery, all the parties involved in facilitating the occurrence of such an illicit act must be held responsible (D’ANDRADE, 1985). This implies that the individuals who pay, accept, offer, and seek bribes are considered offenders and the ones that comply by accepting bribes are viewed as the suitable targets. Due to the complex of the cases dealing with international bribery and the large number of individuals that were involved in the AWB scandal, this study identified numerous suitable targets and motivated offenders with some of them being classified as both motivated offender and a suitable …show more content…

The AWB, the Iraqi government, and Alia were identified as the motivate offenders. In the identification of the suitable targets, evidence was analysed any person, item, or content that was involved in the: provision of illicit services, provision of a benefit that was outside its intended purpose, and acting in a way that complied with bribery (compliant bribee). This criterion found an alignment with the following events in the AWB scandal: tender requests by IGB which includes illicit fees, contracts between AWB and IGB that includes payment of illicit fees, requests for the additional payments that were outside the OFFP, and the complying of AWB to the payment of illicit fees. This analysis indicated that, it is clear that AWB engaged in the improper act of complying with the payment of illicit fees; this made the company come out as the motivated offender. AWB was responsible for signing and paying the contracts that included the illicit fees, thereby making the company a suitable target. In this case, the roles of the suitable target and the motivated offender come out as not being

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