Disguising corrupt payments as legitimate weakens moral restraint over wrongdoing

Evidence

Anil Kumar initially turned down the offer to become a tipster in exchange for payment through a hidden Swiss bank account or for a share of the profits from illegal trading, both of which he regarded as criminal. However, he agreed to the offer when he and Rajaratnam found a way to bundle the corrupt money with payments for lawful consulting services, thus adding a semblance of legitimacy to his activities. Masking the unlawful payment weakened restraint over transgressive conduct but did not diminish the self-devaluative costs. Kumar ended up viewing himself as a “reluctant felon” Others traded morality for substantial payments coupled with friendship. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1465

Categorization

• XREF: This is the mechanism of euphemistic labeling / displacement of responsibility in moral disengagement — connects to the vault’s authoritarianism claims about rationalization. — connects to: Price-fixers had to sanitize illegality to preserve their self-respect; Disguising wrongdoing as legitimate weakens restraint but not self-condemnation; Financial wrongdoing persists when wrongdoers are sheltered from consequences
• CANDY: A reluctant felon who needed his bribes disguised as legitimate consulting fees before he could comply.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1465