Kickbacks and payoffs, greasing someone’s palm or paying them under the table: We have a rich vocabulary for bribery. The French refer to bribes as “wine jugs”; in South Asia, a corrupt transaction might be passed off as “money for tea and refreshments.” Why is bribery so universal, and in what ways does it typically occur? How has it persisted despite countless pledges that authorities are tackling the problem?

This book offers an eye-opening exploration of bribery in practice, taking us inside the sordid world of grubby transactions and tainted institutions. Drawing on an extensive career of skirmishing with fraud, David J. O’Regan examines the all-too-human reasons that people offer and accept bribes. Gripping case studies allow readers to peer into the backrooms where bribery takes place, peek behind the closed doors that conceal corruption from the public, and join auditors as they uncover underhand transactions.

O’Regan contends that bribery is particularly socially damaging because of its uncanny relationship to gift exchange. It undermines collective solidarity, misallocates economic resources, and diminishes social trust. He also argues that many anticorruption efforts provide merely the trappings of compliance—a thin veneer of empty assurance that something is being done. Shining a light into the shadows where corruption thrives, Bribery Humanized proposes realistic steps to curb an ineradicable scourge.