The UK needs to improve its woeful record on combating bribery, says Eoin O’Shea
Corruption is seen as a major cause of global poverty and instability. In 1997 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) adopted its Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials (the OECD Convention). The OECD Convention requires signatory countries to enact legislation which criminalises bribery of foreign public officials and which establishes the jurisdiction of their courts for offences by their nationals which occur abroad.
The OECD monitoring of compliance with the OECD Convention has not been universally complimentary towards the . It has criticised the fact that there have been no prosecutions of overseas bribery since the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 established “long arm” jurisdiction for bribery. This has been attributed, in part, to the complexity of the present law. In the meantime, the decision of the Serious Fraud Office to discontinue its investigation into the Al-Yamamah arms deal of the 1980s has attracted significant media attention.
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