It has layers of corruption. Not only it acts as a blatant bribe as you said, but it also gives them an davantage in stock trading. He's monetizing a means to do insider trading fraud.
Eventually a court will probably rule this practice illegal but by then they'll all have made their money.
Likely dirty/corroded charger connecting points that make the charging contact intermittent.
Clean them, scrape off the layer of crust/corrosion with a jewler's screwdriver if you have to. Once they're clean and charge well again, I recommend putting a little dab of dielectric grease to protect them from corroding again.
Mine started doing that a year after I bought them and I was about to throw them away when I tried doing that and it completely fixed it.