Anti Corruption Abroad and The U.K. Bribery Act

With the issues of corruption becoming an increasingly growing problem here in the US and abroad, governing organizations are finding ways to investigate possible instances of corruption within any organization. Abroad, in places such as the United Kingdom, the UK Bribery Act has focuses on, not only company activity as whole, but also looking into individual actions of its employees on a granular level. In an article written by Samuel Rubenfeld of the Wall Street Journal, he writes how the UK Bribery act, which was enacted in 2011, has secured its first criminal convictions.

“The convictions came as part of an SFO probe into the promotion and sale of biofuel investment products to U.K. investors, the agency said in a statement. They were found guilty of conspiring to produce false sales invoices, allowing one of them to obtain large commissions from investor’s funds; the transactions were disguised using fake email addresses, Swiss bank accounts and companies registered in the Seychelles and British Virgin Islands”

As companies grow increasingly larger in size and revenue, that opportunity for risk becomes an issue. As the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been going after C-level executives and issuing fines to both the company and those at fault for the corruption/bribery, the UK Bribery act sees this conviction as a small victory and emphasis that they too will go after high level officials.

“I don’t think there’s a lesson for companies, but there’s a lesson for people who work for companies, which is that the SFO will pursue private-sector bribery prosecutions of U.K. directors.”

Anti-corruption efforts have to be seen in areas from both, within the organization, and their 3^rd party business partners. Companies have seen their risk grow on an internal and external level. Either way the originating company that allows for such an issue to happen, that company is penalized and its individuals involved. Source Intelligence, with its risk management tools and comprehensive data driven platform, enables companies to increase their ability in benchmarking their own anti-corruption program and even build a detailed anti-corruption compliance program. For more information and a complimentary assessment benchmarking your compliance program click here.