Chapter 3. Anti-Bribery Conventions and Global Law Enforcement Efforts

• Author: Robert W. Tarun
• Pages: 1-13

CHAPTER 3

Anti-Bribery Conventions and

Global Law Enforcement Efforts

Multinational companies should take notice of the increasing global focus on

prosecuting 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 and 2013 foreign

bribery prosecutions by law enforcement authorities in Australia and Canada, as

well as in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United

States in 2010. The U.K. Bribery Act 2010, which became effective July 1, 2011,

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 Organization

for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) Convention on Combating

Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions. The increased

presence of multijurisdictional government investigations will require multina-

tional companies to increasingly engage counsel 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 was formed in 1961. The OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of

Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions (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 OECD Convention does not eliminate the tax deductibility of bribes permit-

ted by some countries and does not generally apply to bribes made to political par-

ties. The U.S. State Department has described the OECD Convention as “one of the

most rigorous anti-corruption conventions and [one that] continues to serve as a

model for new initiatives.”2

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