The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. March 6 that alleges, in 2002, Charles M. Martin, then Monsanto Company’s “government affairs director for Asia, authorized and directed an Indonesian consulting firm to pay a bribe totaling $50,000 to a senior Indonesian Ministry of Environment official.”
The payment, the filing continues, “was made to influence the senior environment official to repeal language in a decree that was unfavorable to Monsanto’s business in Indonesia.”
Assessment. Later the Securities and Exchange Commission explains the “unfavorable” decree was a mid-2001 government ruling that required “bio-technology products
