For example, a government official gets a kickback from a contractor who, as it turns out, performed work for the city at the same price as if it were an arms-length negotiated deal.
The data included all residential land transfers and all arms length transfers--a sale where the buyer and seller are not the same and price is greater than 3, 000.
In order to establish strong evidence of an arms-length negotiation, buyers tend to make an offer a little lower than the ultimate takeover price to allow for adjustments later, especially when they own a piece of the target anyway.
It is to avoid such oversight that companies usually leave room for the price to rise in their own Kabuki-dance negotiations to show it was an arms-length transaction.