Kickback Meaning Examples Forms How It Works

Kickback Meaning

Kickback is an unethical payment for obtaining preference over some capable person for any discriminatory or special treatment for supplying any goods or service or getting any work done. It can be in cash, credits, goods, preferential allocation, or any other valuable material or service.

Kickback can be referred to as a form of bribery wherein the recipient of illegal gain returns some amount, in the name of the commission, to the bribe-taker, who assisted the recipient in obtaining the assistance. Thus, it is a commission paid for getting something done by a person.

How does it Work?

Kickbacks are disguised in the normal operations of an entity, and it is of utmost difficulty to detect such operations. For example, a purchaser paying for goods that have inflated cost & such purchaser will receive a kickback from the seller of goods. White-collar employees conduct such crimes.

The intention behind paying the kickback may be good or bad, but the practice in itself is unethical. For example, a government employee receiving a kickback for a high-cost inflated project will provide a better quality of projects to the public.

Thus, kickback starts with the intention of the player or receiver. The payment is normally referred to as commission in some or other form.

Some of the well-known methods include the following:

Inflating the cost of goodsCost Of GoodsThe Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is the cumulative total of direct costs incurred for the goods or services sold, including direct expenses like raw material, direct labour cost and other direct costs. However, it excludes all the indirect expenses incurred by the company.
read more or servicesVendorsVendorsA vendor refers to an individual or an entity that sells products and services to businesses or consumers. It receives payments in exchange for making items available to end-users. They constitute an integral part of the supply chain management for providing raw materials to manufacturers and finished goods to customers.read more directly contact the employees outside theThe full form of SOP is Standard Operating Procedure & it is a set of guidelines, policies, & procedures that a Company follows to perform its routine tasks following the industry regulations. read more SOPSOPThe full form of SOP is Standard Operating Procedure & it is a set of guidelines, policies, & procedures that a Company follows to perform its routine tasks following the industry regulations. read more for business.No review process for critical processes within the entityHighlighting a specific vendor or customer over othersNo quality check for goods or services received

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Kickback Examples

Advertising Business – An advertiser may promote only those goods that provide a higher commission to the advertiser through kickbacks. The seller of goods will recover the kickback cost by inflating the selling price.Stock Broking – The stockbrokerStockbrokerA stockbroker is an individual or company qualified enough to trade securities in the financial markets on behalf of financial institutions, individual and institutional investors, and organizations. They can work either independently as a professional trader or broker-dealer or associate with a brokerage firm.read more, may prefer to execute or route all the trades through a particular exchange only due to a kickback arrangement, even though another exchange provides timely delivery of securities. Again, such cost is easily recovered from clients through higher charges.

Forms of Kickback

#1 – Medical Industry

Federal health care fraud in the US is famous for such kickbacks. Fraudulent referral schemes are announced, which ultimately lands up bribing the service recipient. Kickbacks under this category are famous for ambulance service, preferential treatment, medical appliances, a prescription for certain types of drugs only, etc. It normally extracts money for better services, which the hospitals are anyway bound to provide.

#2 – Financial Institutions

This type of kickback exists within the banking and financial institutionsFinancial InstitutionsFinancial institutions refer to those organizations which provide business services and products related to financial or monetary transactions to their clients. Some of these are banks, NBFCs, investment companies, brokerage firms, insurance companies and trust corporations. read more. Frauds may include transactions related to mortgage loans, providing business contracts or loans, etc.

#3 – Public Works

These kickbacks are most frequent in case contracts entered into by local governments. The authorized dealers enter into the highly inflated cost for construction of roads with lower quality &, in effect, get the kickbacks from the contracts for the benefit passed on.

#4 – Securities Market

It may include price manipulation and promotion of stock by the parties involved, including the stockbrokers and investment bankers

#5 – Government Contract

This form generally happens in underdeveloped economies. Government-authorized dealers may enter into a disguised contract with the vendors to provide inflated prices. Such kickbacks are common in health care schemes, infrastructure facilities, or defense or educational facilities.

Threat

Discriminatory treatment for a person who can pay for the kickback & strict treatment for a person who cannot pay kickback or cannot help the authorized dealer.The risk of compromise in the quality of goods, machinery, or services may strongly affect the lives of the common person.There is no or low assurance of honest completion of the contract by the vendor or contractor.Public safety may be at risk.

How to Control?

Detection of kickbacks is not as easy as it seems. Such whistle-blowers are normally backed by ethical principles and are free for investigation of any sort. Thus, whistle-blowers have particular importance in derailing the kickback schemes.The management should periodically review the third-party vendors by selecting random samples. The management can check for the entity the vendor owns, his physical address and contact numbers, any reference for the website, authentic information on his website, the price quoted, etc.Management can check for whether any vendor is related to the employees of the organization. Such relations can be checked through the ownership details of the vendor company.In the case of introducing a new vendor in the company books, the entity should have well-placed SOPs to capture every procedure for authentic dealing with the new vendor.Ensure that the prices are checked every time. The vendors should be reviewed periodically to ensure that only a few vendors are not given with most of the contracts, and the contracts are equally spread across the vendors. Also, the supply capacity of each vendor should be checked before providing the contract.