Anti-bribery conventions and global law enforcement efforts

• Author: Robert W. Tarun
• Pages: 55-66

CHAPTER 3

Anti-Bribery Conventions and

Global Law Enforcement Efforts

Multinational companies should take notice of the increasing global focus on pros-

ecuting bribery of foreign government officials. This focus is evident from a number

of major international treaties directed against these practices; legislation in the

signatory nations implementing these pacts; and 2011 foreign bribery prosecutions

by law enforcement authorities in Australia and Canada, as well as in France, Ger-

many, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 2010. The U.K.

Bribery Act in particular has drawn major attention from companies that carry on

business in whole or in part in the United Kingdom and are thereby now subject

to a very expansive law. It draws in significant part upon the language of the Orga-

nization for Economic and Cooperative Development Convention on Combating

Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions (the OECD Con-

vention). The increased presence of multijurisdictional government investigations

will require multinational companies to increasingly engage international law firms

or a team of law firms to handle the often conflicting interests, privacy laws, local

anti-corruption laws, and demands of U.S. and foreign law enforcement authorities.

I. THE ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC AND COOPERATIVE

DEVELOPMENT CONVENTION

A. Background

The OECD Convention was signed on December 17, 1997.1 This treaty requires

all signatories to take steps to criminalize the payment of bribes to foreign public

officials and to establish appropriate sanctions on firms and individuals guilty of

violating these provisions. The Convention does not eliminate the tax deductibility

of bribes permitted by some countries and does not generally apply to bribes made

to political parties. The U.S. State Department has described the Convention as

“one of the most rigorous anti-corruption conventions and [one that] continues to

serve as a model for new initiatives.”2

B. The OECD Convention and Domestic Legislation

The OECD Convention is the narrowest of the multilateral treaties and, like the

U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, focuses only on transnational active bribery.3

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