“Foreign bribery continues to inflict enormous damage throughout the world. Holding culpable companies to account is an excellent start. But a complete picture of justice will only take shape once all the harm caused by these companies is adequately considered.”
Andrew Dornbierer puts his finger on the button in his foreword to our latest Working Paper: Compensating the victims of foreign bribery: UK legislation, practice and recommended reforms, by Sam Hickey.
The UK is a global leader in its efforts to target foreign bribery. It is one of the only countries worldwide to use negotiated settlements such as deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) to resolve cases and extract penalties from corporations that commit corruption abroad. The UK has also laudably committed to using the proceeds of DPAs in foreign bribery cases to compensate the victims of corruption, particularly in countries that suffer its worst effects.
The United Kingdom’s Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act received Royal Assent on 15 March 2022.
This article arises from the work of the Basel Institute's Public Governance team on informal governance. It was produced by research partners at the ESCP Business School (Paris) and the EDC Paris Business School (Courbevoie), France.
The first Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) of the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office (SFO), secured on 30 November 2015 at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, has on 26 August 2020 given rise to a plea bargain settlement in Tanzania. As announced by Tanzania’s National Prosecutions Service (NPS), this nets the Tanzanian authorities TZS 1.5 billion (approx. USD 650,000 or GBP 500,000).
Integrity risks for businesses trading overseas have shot up due to the pandemic. Anti-corruption and human rights compliance approaches designed to protect companies during “business as usual” can come under strain in these unusual circumstances.
How can companies – especially smaller companies with limited resources – protect themselves from integrity risks in these times of crisis? There are no easy answers, but it’s important to talk about the questions.
The Framework for the Return of Assets from Corruption and Crime in Kenya (FRACCK), agreed and signed by the Governments of Kenya, Jersey, Switzerland and the UK in 2018 with support from the Basel Institute's International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR), is already generating strong interest for its "innovative" and "novel" approach to asset return.
These were the words of Brigitte Strobel-Shaw, Officer-in-Charge of the Corruption and Economic Crime Branch of the UNODC, during a May 7-9 International Expert Meeting on the Return of Stolen Assets.
All the major financial centres have experienced a rise in anti-money laundering rules and regulations. Initially, anti-money laundering laws were used as a weapon in the war on drugs, whilst more recently they have been deployed in the ongoing fight against terrorism. These developments, the authors reveal, have had serious consequences for banks and other financial institutions – affecting not only profit margins but also the way in which business is conducted.
The United Kingdom published its first Anti-Corruption Strategy (2017-2022) on 11 December 2017 in fulfillment of its pledge made at the London Anti-Corruption Summit in May 2016. Most interesting for us at the International Centre for Collective Action is the UK Strategy’s commitment to support “strengthened business-led collective action to reduce corruption” that is tucked awa
At an event in London co-hosted by the Basel Institute on Governance and Chatham House on Monday 10 July 2017, panelists from Jersey, Kenya, Nigeria and the UK agreed that partnership, understanding each other’s systems and procedures, and informal communication between requesting and requested states is critical to successfully recover stolen public funds internationally.