The U.S. Justice Department unsealed a 47-count indictment charging 14 world soccer figures, including officials of FIFA, with racketeering, wire fraud,  bribery, kickbacks, money laundering, money laundering conspiracies, undisclosed and illegal payments

Positive Steps in Reforms

The recent events in Ukraine have had a massive impact on business in the country. Companies are faced with many new risks, while at the same time encountering new opportunities. The staunch anti-corruption platform declared by Ukraine's President and government, following the EuroMaidan revolution, has provided a new approach for international and local businesses to deliver messages to Ukrainian authorities and lobby interests in a transparent and FCPA/UK bribery act compliant manner.

Lobbying is not a well-known activity. The awareness of the driving forces of democracy and the daily life of the legislative sphere is low. When individuals are confronted with lobbying, they usually have a bad perception of what this is about. Lobbying has a very bad reputation and the concept is frequently associated with words such as manipulation, corruption, bribery, and so on. The rare occasions the public hear about lobbying is in the media. There is crisis everywhere and scandals sell so media rather pick up on bad stories concerning lobbyists instead of good ones.

One of the most frequently criticized aspects of the lobbying profession is the so-called Revolving Door, whereby individuals move between positions in the public and the private public sectors. According to conventional wisdom, experience in government allows former officials to develop a network of friends and colleagues that they can later exploit on behalf of their clients. Such movement has become more frequent throughout the world in recent years as governments and business communities have developed closer ties.

As lobbyists we are experts in providing information to legislators and helping guide their decision-making process. Our expertise is particularly valuable when one considers that neither legislators nor the interest groups that hire us have the technical background or the time to delve into the detailed implications of all the pieces of legislation that are under consideration. Many in the media and the general public hold the view that our main asset is not what we know, but instead whom we know.

Objectives

• Has the board defined and agreed on objectives?
• Has the board agreed on exactly what will be asked for, the optimum outcome, and the minimum acceptable outcome?
• Has the board defined success and failure?

Resources

The question of why organized interests lobby allies rather than opponents, or vice versa, goes to the heart of what lobbying is about. Basically, two different approaches can be distinguished on how to conceptualize lobbying and both approaches have different implications for whether, why and how allied or opposing policymakers are targeted.

Lobbyists make strategic lobbying choices based on their available resources, their lobbying targets, the characteristics of the issue, and the characteristics of other groups. However, the characteristics of the legislative context are also important factors for lobbyists to consider.

Politico describes three levels in a hierarchy of lobbying needs: Need to Know, Need to Inform and Need to Negotiate and emphasizes  that real lobbying only occurs at the third level of negotiation.