The baseball season is upon us and the Houston Astros have opened with their worst start since 1983. At 3-9, things may be looking a bit bleak for the hometown heroes. However several sportswriters have pointed out that the 1983 team ended up with a winning record, at 85-77. Things may be looking equally as bleak for Hewlett-Packard (HP) right about now. Will HP, or the Astros for that matter, come out of this with a winning record? At this point, it is too early to tell but this posting will review some of the issues that have been reported on the HP/Russia bribery and corruption scandal in the past week.

Several of this commentator’s colleagues have noted something along of the lines of “even the WSJ has reported on this scandal, so it must be bad”. The April 15, 2010 edition of the WSJ reported that German and Russian authorities are investigating whether HP executives paid millions of dollars in bribes to win a contract in Russia. German prosecutors are looking into the possibility that HP executives paid about $10.9 million in bribes to win a $47.3 million contract. Under this scheme, company sold computer equipment, through a German subsidiary, to the office of the prosecutor general of the Russian Federation. The April 16, 2010, edition of the WSJ reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has joined the Russian and German investigations.