Just look at the website http://exxonsecrets.org/ for the details on that corruption.

1. The engineering of the patent trademark and tradeecret rules : A seminal work is the book Steal this Idea: The corporate confiscation of creativity by Michael Perelman which documents the way large corporations have engineered the patent, copyright and trademarks systems to their advantage. One of the most egregious examples is the way that publicly funded research at the N.I.H. is handed to Big Pharma without anything like just compensation.

There are plenty of examples of corporate/government collusion, like the arrest of Stanley Adams by Swiss authorities for reporting La Roche’s illegal price fixing practices to the EC.

Another important case Michael Perelman makes is that the direction of academic work, now funded more by corporations than government, has drifted away from the public interest to serving the needs of large corporations. It is because of this effect that we have plenty of drugs for chronic conditions of high wage earners (Lipitor and Viagra, for example) but are missing crucial antibiotics for emerging disease-resistant organisms. A massive market failure, killing millions, all for the benefit of a few corporations.

1. Public Health concerns ignored for fear of disrupting businesses:

Another area of concern has to be the current conditions in China, which an authoritarian government is actively trying to suppress important health information, like the fact that 750,000 additional deaths in china were caused by pollution. We may think that public health issues in China are not our concern, but remember: the Chinese government kept SARS under wrap, hidden from WHO in a deceitful attempt to avoid international awareness of the way SARS had been mis-managed, and it was only good luck that SARS had a short incubation period that prevented it from becoming a public health catastrophe equal to or greater than the 1918 Spanish infuenza outbreak. http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/convergence/

I would also put down the fact that USA is about to approve the use of a new class of antibiotics for use in farm animals despite the fact that the American Medical Association and about 12 other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals probably would speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotic, as has happened with other drugs.

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/stupid-question-but-at-least-my-cow-is-well/

Those are my top 2, although I have quite a few more on my blog, as its a major concern. A lot of it happens at a more subtle level than a direct payoff, which has fallen out of favor as business get more “sophisticated”