Dragonized, I have a true story to tell you about business ethics. I'd appreciate your response.

I used to control GKN pallets for a major UK brewery. We imported German beer from Bremen into Felixstowe by sea. A shipping company got the contract. But the GKN Europallet was a different size from the British Europallet. So, GKN charged my company a repatriation fee of GBP 2.80/pallet of that imported German beer to recover their shipping costs of empty Europallets (that were not used by British manufacturers) back to mainland Europe from the UK. I suggested to my senior manager that if we could get the German brewery to palletise on British GKNs we could avoid repatriation charges. However, we'd have to bear the cost of shipping empty British GKNs to Bremen from the UK. It would then boil down to if such shipping of empty pallets could be effected significantly cheaper/pallet than GBP 2.80. My boss contacted Bremen, and I was duly informed that the Germans agreed to palletise our orders on British GKNs if we wished. I was then told to write to shipping companies, including the shipping company we used for importation of the German beer, to obtain quotes. I realized that as the UK is a net importer, there will be many ships returning to Europe without cargo, after having unloaded at British ports. So, it might well be possible to get low rates for what we asked them to do.

The most attractive quote came from a Glasgow shipping company, 80 pence/pallet. The company doing our importation of palletised German beer quoted 1.40/pallet. I fully expected the Glasgow outfit to get the work, but no - my unethical director told the importer what the Glasgow quote was and got them to quote the same price. Then he awarded them the empty pallet exportation contract, so that they had both sides of the business! A dirty trick of a British beer manufacturer! So, it's not just in the PRC where cheating takes place.