About Lobay

Lobay looks like a marketplace. Every listing is a real bribery case, and the price is the bribe as an authority or a court documented it.

What gets listed

A case is listed only if all of this holds:

• A company, or people acting for it, paid or promised money or other benefits to a public official, a politician, a party or an employee of a state-controlled company, to get something in return.
• The case is closed: a final conviction, a guilty plea, or an official resolution in which the company accepted the facts (for example a Swiss penalty order or a US deferred prosecution agreement). Allegations, open trials and overturned verdicts are left out.
• The amount appears in an official document, or in reputable reporting of the court decision or settlement.

Small local cases count as much as large international ones.

Sources

We use court decisions and court press releases, prosecutors' and regulators' releases, and reputable news reports of verdicts. Every fact in our records is tied to a source page and a short verbatim passage, which we check by hand. Listings link to the article and, where available, the official record.

Numbers

• Amounts appear exactly as the source states them, with words like "more than" or "in total". We don't convert, adjust for inflation or add up amounts; any conversion on the site is done in code and labelled.
• Since run 3, an estimated or approximate amount, or a range, reported by a reputable outlet covering the resolved case is accepted. It keeps the outlet's wording ("around", "some"); for a range we show the lower bound as "at least". Such listings have medium confidence. The resolution itself must still be final and documented.
• "What the bribe bought" shows a figure only when one is documented: a profit or benefit an authority stated, money it confiscated or ordered repaid, or the documented value of a contract. A contract value is never presented as profit. Where no figure exists, we describe in words what was obtained.
• Where sources disagree, we use the official figure and note the difference in our records.

People

Local and regional officials are never named, only their role and place. National figures are named only when an official document shows a conviction or guilty plea or names them. Companies are named when they were themselves convicted or sanctioned; otherwise they are described.

Status checks

Each case is checked for appeals, reversals, annulments or pardons after the resolution. The check date is recorded.

Research dates and scope so far

Run 1 (test run), researched on 27 October 2026: Germany, Austria and Switzerland, plus one case resolved by Swiss and US authorities. Austria produced no case that met the criteria. Candidates were excluded when only the fine (not the bribe) was stated, when a verdict was not yet final, or when the payer was not acting for a company.

Run 2, researched on 27 October 2026: worldwide, in ten regional slices plus a dedicated search for US local cases. 31 cases were added, from 22 countries plus four schemes spanning several countries; 18 of them involve local or regional officials. Thirteen candidates were left out: four because no company was paying, the amount was only demanded, no bribe amount was stated, or the value of the benefit was never established; nine were set aside because the verdict was not shown to be final, the only amount came from the charge stage or as a range, the money went to a private employee rather than an official, or the payer acted for himself rather than a company. Some listings rest on a single news report of the court decision; they are marked as such in our records.

Run 3, researched on 28 October 2026: Europe. 22 cases were added from 16 countries, 18 of them involving local or regional officials, plus one scheme run from the UK with Iraqi officials. Eleven candidates were left out: two rejected (a verdict quashed on appeal; no paying company identified) and nine set aside because finality, state ownership of the recipient's employer, a company payer or a bribe sum tied to the verdict could not be established. Three rounds of searching found no qualifying case for France, Spain, Portugal, Austria or Slovenia. The collection now holds 56 cases.

Limits

Amounts are nominal, as stated at the time. Gains appear only when documented. Coverage is a selection, not a complete record of corruption anywhere. Where official court texts could not be retrieved online, figures come from reputable reporting of the decision, and the record says so. A few cases resolved by guilty plea were still awaiting sentencing when checked; the plea itself establishes the facts.

Corrections

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