Welcome back. This video is about other forms that corruption can take. In 2011, I was covering Africa in the Middle East, for an American company, but based out of the Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in the UK. That was the act of Britain pasters Bribery Act, and we'd arranged for a lawyer to come in, who specialized in that field to talk to us about what the act meant for the way we worked. I said, I'd like to offer an example of something that happened on my territory week after week. And this is what I told her.
We've sent a number of containers to a customer in Egypt, who was a contractor and the containers are now sitting on the dock in Alexandria, which is Egypt's main port. The customer needs to get them out of there so that he can start work. So we take ourselves to Alexandria court and go to the customs office, I'll be presenting a separate course on documentation that you need for international sales. So all I'll say now is that declared goods to customers, anywhere almost anywhere in the world. There's a bunch of documents you need. On the visit to the customs that I'm talking about.
I have them with me. I placed them on the counter and I turned the guy on the other side that we're here to clear a shipment and he doesn't even glance at the documents. He just says these documents are not in order. Now I know there's nothing the matter with the documents because I took great care over that. So one of the most important things you have to do when you're in international sales, and he knows that I know and we could go through a nice gag here about I know that he knows that I know that he knows but that's not what this is about. What I do is to take the $20 bill out of my pocket Put it on the counter and keep my hand on it and say, I wonder if there's anything we can do about that.
He still hasn't looked at the documents, but he has clocked the 20 books. Now he reaches up, takes the documents, gives them a brief once over and puts a stamp on them the stamp means that we can now clear them through the port and take them to the contractors place of work and get started. But it hasn't given them to me. I take my hand off the $20 bill. It disappears instantly into his pocket, and he puts the documents on the counter so that I can take them. The customer rings his transport company and arranges for the containers to be taken away.
I described all of that to the lawyer and she said you can no longer do that. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I left. That customs guy could have kept those containers on the docks for months on end. When you have containers sitting on the doctor, you don't clear them within a fairly short time you start paying demurrage which amounts to a fine. It mounts up very quickly. Our customer, if you didn't get started on his contract could have found himself paying penalty charges.
Refusal to pay the $20 that I knew the customs guy wanted, could have ended in costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars. When you're in Africa, Asia or the Middle East, whatever the currency in that country happens to be US dollars are always acceptable. I kept a stock of US dollars bills in my pocket $1 $2 $5 20 dollars to use depending on what the case merited. But in the next video, we're going to talk about what happens in a country where $20 wouldn't buy you the time of day. I'll see you there