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In recent years, a number of countries have strengthened their anti-corruption laws. Some of these laws apply to foreign firms, including those based in the United States. Considering, however, that the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is regarded as the most powerful anti-corruption regime in the world, a key question arises: Do foreign anti-corruption laws affect US firms? Using US multinational firms' differential exposure to the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the 2010 United Kingdom Bribery Act (UKBA), this study provides evidence suggesting that they do. Following the UKBA's adoption, US firms subject to its jurisdiction curb their business in high-corruption-risk countries, relative to their unexposed US peers. This result is more pronounced for firms with greater bribery exposure and enforcement risk and passes a battery of placebo and robustness tests. These findings suggest that foreign anti-corruption laws produce incremental regulatory costs for US firms by raising the potential for multijurisdictional enforcement. As policymakers worldwide deliberate on approaches to reduce cross-border corruption, this evidence aligns with the view that enacting extraterritorial laws can enhance the effectiveness of anti-corruption regulation in the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-bribery and corruption in sport governing bodies is a little explored area in academic literature. This paper addresses the gap in the literature through expert perceptions on the current state of anti-bribery and corruption policies in international and national sport governing bodies as seen through an ethical climate theory lens. Thus, this paper addresses the question of how and why enhancing anti-bribery and corruption in sport internal controls can mitigate financial corruption and improve ethical climates. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 17 forensic accountants and anticorruption experts to garner their opinion on strengths and weaknesses of current policies in sport governing bodies and ascertain the link between anticorruption, accounting controls, and ethical climates. The transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis and the results showed a consistency of opinion with regards to the policy improvements required for a robust anti-bribery and corruption programme within sport governing bodies, with multiple implications for ethical organisational climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can prosecutions by US authorities help spread enforcement of foreign bribery laws to other countries? In this article, we explore this question by re-examining earlier scholarship that found that US prosecutions of foreign corporations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) increase the likelihood that the corporation's home state will enforce its own foreign bribery laws. Using a conditional-frailty Cox model that allows us to model foreign bribery enforcement actions as repeat-events, we do not find evidence that FCPA prosecutions lead to sustained increases of foreign bribery enforcement by target countries. We also find that prior results are not robust to the inclusion of an important confounding variable: a country's level of exposure to corruption in their trading partners. Still, while our findings indicate a more limited role of US law enforcement in this area, we nonetheless see many promising avenues for future research on transnational law enforcement and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the new corporate offence of corporate 'failure to prevent' bribery found in section 7(1) of the UK Bribery Act 2010 and the nature of consequential corporate liability. It discusses the nature of corporate vicarious liability, strict liability, and the identification doctrine and identifies the philosophical foundations of the principle of corporate failure to prevent bribery. The philosophical foundation of corporate liability emanating from the principle of the corporate offence is not based on the principles of corporate vicarious liability, strict liability or the identification doctrine. Liability attaches directly to the corporation because the rationale behind the legislation is to eliminate the culture of corporate bribery both domestically and extra-territorially. Section 7(2) affords a corporation a legal defence against its failure to prevent bribery if it can demonstrate that it had implemented adequate procedures to prevent individuals associated with it from undertaking such behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines 10 things to know when dealing with government entities. These include difference between contracting with government entities and contracting with private entities, inability of public agencies to extend indemnification or agree to limit liability, inverse inherent authorities of public and corporate entities, and absence of assurance that nondisclosure agreements will prevent disclosure and tendency of private conversations to be made public.

I exploit the passage of the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 as a shock to U.K. firms' cost of doing business. Around the Act's passage, U.K. firms operating in high-corruption countries experience a drop in firm value, while their non-U.K. competitors in these countries encounter an increase. U.K. firms respond to the Act by reducing the expansion of their subsidiary network into perceptively corrupt countries. Moreover, their sales and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in such countries declines. In sum, bribes facilitate doing business in certain countries. Imposing unilateral antibribery regulations on some firms benefits their unregulated competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite prosecutors' difficulties in proving corporate bribery, nearly all enforcement actions end with a settlement at the pretrial stage. Compared to court proceedings, settlement-based enforcement provide prosecutors with flexibility to reward offenders' self-reporting and cooperation, and reach quicker conclusions to complex cases. In this article, we explain, such enforcement needs regulation to minimize potentially harmful side-effects. When the difference between a court and settlement sanction exceeds a certain size, the alleged offender accepts a settlement regardless of actual responsibility of misconduct. For the prosecutor, the option of offering a lenient settlement means weaker incentives to ascertain the material facts of the case. Society receives less information about the blameworthy act, little opportunity to evaluate the sanction, and less reason to expect sanctions to deter bribery. We show why such consequences result in under-deterrence of bribery and weaker rule of law. The use of settlement may have a self-escalating effect because the enforcement mode can reduce the predictability of the law, while a defendant's inclination to accept a settlement offer depends on the predictability of the law. Our results suggest that United Kingdom's current escalation of enforcement of corporate bribery laws will lead to a mixture of settlements and court decisions, while in the United States firms will continue to negotiate settlements as if there were no opportunity to have their cases tested in court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A double standard in bribery law has emerged. Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has broken with a century of progressive reforms by narrowly interpreting domestic bribery and other conflict-of-interest laws. This weak federal domestic bribery law now stands in stark contrast to the robust and expansive prosecutions of bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which limits the ability of U.S. entities to bribe foreign public officials. As a result of this double standard, those who seek to improperly influence domestic public officials are often able to engage in behavior that looks and smells like bribery but is not bribery. Similar behavior in the foreign context, however, is punished by the FCPA. The act of bribery, whether foreign or domestic, not only undermines the practice of good governance but also delegitimizes government institutions themselves. Federal bribery laws were traditionally designed and interpreted to address both of these concerns, evolving into powerful tools of public accountability. But the Supreme Court has restricted the interpretation of federal bribery laws in ways that have weakened the domestic antibribery regime. As a result, high-profile elected officials are able to avoid punishment for acts that would have, until recently, been considered illegal. In contrast, the FCPA has not only withstood legal challenges, but is widely recognized as a powerful tool for curbing corruption. This Article explores this divergence, argues that the domestic bribery law should be modified, and identifies two aspects of the FCPA as a model for domestic statutory reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, the United States' different administrations of justice have been prosecuting foreign companies suspected of violating US laws on bribery of foreign public officials and of failing to respect embargoes and economic sanctions. Even if these violations take place outside US borders, the American prosecution authorities (including the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Foreign Assets Control) consider themselves legitimate to intervene. European multinationals have been particularly sanctioned. For instance, in 2014, fines reached up to 9 billion dollars for the French bank BNP, which was accused of using dollars in its transactions with certain countries sanctioned by the US (mainly Iran, Cuba and Sudan). Punishing companies and hitting them in the wallet are not the only objectives of the American administration. The United States takes advantage of legal procedures against foreign companies to collect millions of bytes of data, sometimes including sensitive information on them as well as on their partners and markets. Facing this legal offensive, Europe is still struggling to provide responses to protect its companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A handful of nations spearhead the global anti-corruption regime through the transnational enforcement of foreign bribery laws. These laws prohibit corporations with a connection to the enforcing nation from paying or offering bribes to the officials of a foreign nation. Enforcement agencies construe the extraterritorial application of these laws broadly, establishing their global prominence. The most notable example is the United States Department of Justice's enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA). Enforcement agencies typically resolve investigations against corporations through deferred prosecution agreements and other consensual settlement mechanisms known generally as non-trial resolutions. Fines and penalties paid pursuant to these agreements can extend beyond the billion-dollar mark. In most cases, money paid in fines and penalties goes to the treasury of the enforcing nation. However, a movement has emerged that advocates for the sharing of proceeds of non-trial resolutions with the victims of foreign bribery, namely, citizens and governments in the developing world. This movement is complemented by a small number of instances in which non-trial resolutions have been used to provide remediation in this manner. However, these cases do not reveal a coherent approach to remediation, and enforcement agencies do not have the benefit of any kind of conceptual or practical framework to guide the provision of remediation. The extant literature also fails to consider the many political and practical difficulties of coupling transnational foreign bribery enforcement with a remedial agenda. The purpose of this Article is to address the practicalities of when and how remediation might be written into the terms of non-trial resolutions. To achieve this goal, this Article assumes two functions. First, it offers a conceptual framework to underpin remediation by defining elusive notions such as harm, victimhood, and remediation itself. Second, it presents a list of factors to guide the provision of remediation in foreign bribery cases. The shared benefit of these conceptual and practical frameworks is that they allow remediation in foreign bribery settlements to be approached with newfound precision. These frameworks are ultimately geared toward moving practice forward in this fledging field by improving the consistency of outcomes and developing a body of precedent and best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the creation of equivalent living conditions. It mentions politicians and journalists are more understanding of fears ; loss of home and greater attention for so-called abandoned regions. It talks about the course of the development of parliamentary structures at the levels of constitutional and criminal law on bribery. It mentions about inhibitions of the political actors in dealing with parliamentary corruption.

The article informs that France has embodied the model of revolutionizing the state and society, in order to write down the result in a constitution. It mentions need for reforms especially in the Public finance and administrative reorganization. It talks about the course of the development of parliamentary structures at the levels of constitutional and criminal law on bribery.

The article discusses 1789 Declaration of Human and Civil Rights is a milestone for the guarantees of individuals to and within the State. It mentions about providing clear and coherent lists of fundamental rights that can be traced back; and the basic lines of the philosophy of law. It talks about the course of the development of parliamentary structures at the levels of constitutional and criminal law on bribery.

The article talks about voting rights and dealing with the parliamentary corruption in Germany. It talks about the course of the development of parliamentary structures at the levels of constitutional and criminal law on bribery. It mentions about inhibitions of the political actors in dealing with parliamentary corruption.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the impact of the enforcement of the international anti-bribery legal framework in developing countries. Design/methodology/approach: It uses the PetroTiger case to examine the effects of foreign bribery prosecutions in Colombia, from a bribe-receivers perspective. PetroTiger is a USA-based company that was prosecuted for bribing public officials in Colombia. As a result, the public officials involved were also prosecuted in Colombia for receiving bribes. This case serves to illustrate how international anti-bribery law operates in practice and how it impacts Colombian law enforcement institutions and their capacity to prosecute bribe-receivers. The Colombian response to the international anti-corruption framework is examined in this study through the review of legislative efforts taken to address the problems of bribery and corruption in public procurement. Findings: This study finds that enforcement of foreign bribery laws raise awareness of the situation of corruption in developing countries, generate parallel prosecutions of individuals at the receiving end of bribes and helps developing countries to develop technical expertise to fight corruption. Practical implications: In practice, due to the transnational nature of foreign bribery, without international agreements, this type of corruption in international business would seldom lead to prosecution. Although the effectiveness of the enforcement of international anti-corruption law is debated, in reality, prosecutions of foreign bribery by developed countries have more positive than negative implications for developing countries. Social implications: Assist to continue efforts to deter corruption. Originality/value: No many studies have looked at the effectiveness of anti-corruption international law in developing countries. As indicated by Mr. Moulette Patrick head of Anti-Corruption Division at organisation for economic co-operation and development more research on the effectiveness of the UN enacted Convention against Corruption, which is what this paper does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) cases involving China, and China's anti-bribery law. Topics discussed include the provisions of the FCPA, anti-bribery provisions and agencies enforcing bribery and corruption in China, and the country's business culture and the economic system. Also mentioned are the differences between China's anti-bribery laws and the FCPA, and the wide-array of potential FCPA violations.

The article discusses the U.S.'s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Germany's Gesetz zur Beka ¨mpfung internationaler Bestechung, and presents recommendations for reforming both anti-bribery systems.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") criminalizes foreign bribery by (1) American defendants; (2) defendants who trade stocks in the United States or register with the SEC; and (3) foreign defendants who act in furtherance of foreign bribery while inside the United States It imposes accounting requirements on some potential defendants. Congress meant the FCPA to help developing countries eliminate bribery, and, in so doing, advance U.S. economic and political interests. However, the FCPA has some fundamental flaws--flaws which U.S. enforcement agencies have particularly abused of late. The FCPA is vague. The reticence of defendants to go to trial has kept the courts from clarifying it and allowed prosecutors to interpret it however they like. The FCPA is also imperialist. These problems can be rectified by repealing the anti-bribery provisions and replacing them with a modified accounting requirement inspired by but independent from the accounting provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quid pro quo is an exchange of value between a citizen or group--often a businessperson or organization--and an official; what the citizen or group offers can take either monetary or nonmonetary form and what the official supplies, in return, is some kind of public act. Despite the fact that instances of quid pro quo seem continually to compel public attention, very few rise to the level of bribery, i.e., the level in which they are resolved judicially. In part, quid pro quo eludes judicial forums for factual reasons: It is difficult to prove. And in part, the reasons are normative: The distinction between objectionable quid pro quo and acceptable democratic norms--on which citizens and groups ought to be able to support officials who are in turn responsive to them--is difficult to draw. Hence, a great gray area of quid pro quo finds itself resolved (or at least debated) in political forums. In what follows I examine central strands of American public discourse over the factual and normative issues of quid pro quo. My purpose is to articulate those principles which most parsimoniously account for its structure, and to explore what presuppositions various discourse-participants either explicitly or implicitly bring to bear in determining whether a situation constitutes a troubling quid pro quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-established major U.S. corporations such as McDonald's, Walmart, and Proctor and Gamble continue to derive a majority of revenues from foreign operations. In addition, a number of relatively new U.S. technology companies such as: Airbnb (founded in 2008); Facebook (founded in 2004); Snap (founded in 2011); Twitter (founded in 2006); and Uber (founded in 2009), find themselves deep into international markets, often within just a few years of creation, and certainly by the end of their first decade of operation. Increased international commerce results in the potential for greater exposure to global demands for bribery. Bribery and corruption remains a cancer eating away at the ability of nation states to provide for their citizens. Corrupt payments siphon off funds that might otherwise be used to: provide housing; feed the hungry; fight poverty, illness and disease; and educate the masses. The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Framework offers a valuable tool in the anti-fraud struggle and in FCPA and U.K. Bribery Act compliance. COSO's 2017 update to the Enterprise Risk Management--Integrated Framework addresses developments during recent years in integrating risk with strategy into the ERM process. Our paper proceeds in eight parts. First, we discuss the bribery and corruption problem. Second, a discussion of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is presented. Third, we describe the U.K. Bribery Act. Fourth, we discuss the development and evolution of the COSO ERM Framework. Fifth, we apply the COSO ERM Framework as an anti-fraud strategy to assist in compliance with the FCPA and U.K. Bribery Act. Sixth, we discuss the application of Deferred Prosecution Agreements to the FCPA and their relevance to COSO ERM. Next, we explore the likely changes in FCPA enforcement under the Trump Administration and then we conclude. We believe this Article contributes to the bribery and corruption literature by exploring the potential benefits of the COSO framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the case McDonnell v. U.S. to discuss the issue of what constitutes an 'official act' of public officials under the bribery laws of the state of Virginia and the federal government. Also cited are the charges filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia against Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife Maureen G. McDonnell like conspiracy to commit honest-services wire fraud, and how the court's ruling failed to reinforce democracy.

The article discusses the enforcement of anti-corruption laws that have been enacted following the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention. Topics explored include the corruption investigation involving petroleum company Petróleo Brasileiro, the establishment of a task force focused on providing mutual legal assistance (MLA) between nations, and the prevalence of bribery involving government officials.

The way in which people understand the dynamic of signatories’ enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention determines the way in which they formulate policy recommendations, and a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic of signatories’ Convention enforcement demands the coordination of two different analytic approaches—the rational-choice approach and the institutional approach. The popular rational-choice approach in current literature highlights the “under-enforcement” problem of the Convention, assumes the decisive influence of signatories’ self-seeking nature on Convention enforcement, and seeks to identify the structural failure of the anti-bribery collaboration which generates unsatisfactory cost-benefit calculations and encourages signatories to shirk. While a branch of the rational-choice account converges on the failure of the existing monitoring system in deterring free riders by borrowing wisdom from cooperation theories, it fails to illustrate that the anti-bribery collaboration by its very nature is incompatible with a centralized monitoring approach—a conventional effective solution to cooperation dilemmas. To fill this gap, Part I & II of this study lays bare the incompatibility of a centralized monitoring approach with the anti-bribery collaboration based on the findings of current rational-choice account and frames a decentralized monitoring system as an alternative. On the other hand, Part III of this study argues that another face of the dynamic of Convention enforcement—the developmental reality in leading jurisdictions, is also noteworthy. An institutional approach which highlights the relevance of favorable domestic institutional contexts to robust Convention enforcement is proposed as a counterpart to the rational-choice approach. By analyzing the case of the SEC’s increasingly zealous enforcement of the FCPA in the US during the period from the 1980s to the 2000s, this study concludes that local agencies’ adherence to other official duties in an ever-evolving institutional context may result in an effect of “unconscious enforcement” of anti-bribery laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border transactions are generating corresponding globalisation of law enforcement efforts. Culture has significantly influenced the legal analysis of anti-bribery law. With the increase of transnational bribery, benefits from globalisation will be undermined unless an effective legal regime can mitigate the harm of bribery. It is perceived that corruption in China is more prevalent than in the West given its embedded place in Chinese culture. It is further alleged that Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) are taking advantage of an unlevel playing field, as they are not subject to stringently-enforced anti-bribery laws. This hypothesis creates a myriad of anti-bribery problems in terms of legislation and enforcement, which particularly manifest in China’s perceived cultural toleration of bribery. Cultural assumptions undermine the global anti-bribery regime and compromise potential collaborative anti-bribery efforts across jurisdictions in a rapidly globalizing world. The Chinese culture does not necessarily impede China’s criminalisation of paying bribes to foreign officials. It is argued that the cultural role should not be overestimated, otherwise the hazard of the ethnocentric engagement with the Chinese culture would affect the ability of foreign MNCs to integrate their global compliance programmes. Multinationals can only mitigate their exposure to criminal liability globally, provided that they comply robustly with anti-bribery laws of both home and host jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation and control of bribery and corrupt practices by globally active corporations has become a matter of increasing concern in recent years. For many years the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977) has stood as a model for other countries. Other countries have been slow to introduce improved anti-bribery laws and have often only been prompted to review their laws and practices in this area as a result of major corporate scandals. The passage of the UK Bribery Act (2010) has now provided a more broad-ranging model that has built upon prior experiences, such as in the USA, as well as upon advances in regulatory theory. Multilateral efforts, such as by the G20, have also become more important in encouraging countries to enhance global anti-bribery mechanisms. This paper critically examines this national and multilateral regulatory experience and discusses difficulties that individual states, such as Australia, have had in responding to the need for more effective anti-bribery laws and enforcement mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case McDonnell v. United States regarding the prosecution of public corruption. Topics discussed include Supreme Court's analysis of "official acts" in prior cases such as United States v. Birdsall and United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California, federal briberystatute makes it a crime for a public official receive or accept anything of value for official act and errors in the jury instructions.

The article focuses on the issues on the issues surrounding extraterritorial corruption, along with solutions for mitigating the same in the U.S. Topics dicussed include enactment of U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and Great Britain Bribery Act for addressing the same; laws governing transnational bribery in the country; and shortcoming of current criminal law models in eliminating the same.

Present paper aims to analyze the situation of a medic, civil servant in the exercise of his duties, who is compelled to ask the patient to pay the provided medical services from his own funds. The economic and social context of Romania over the last ten years, along with Romania's entry into the economic crisis, has led to drastic austerity measures. A major area that has been affected was the medical field in which patients were faced with two situations. On the one hand, in order to benefit from medical services, reimbursed by the Romanian state, they had to be included on waiting lists, and on the other hand, they had the possibility to sign a sponsorship contract with the medical unit and to pay out of their own funds the medical services they were receiving. Thus, as many people have opted for the sponsorship contract, this situation has come to the attention of anticorruption prosecutors who have considered that signing of a sponsorship contract is a disguised form of bribery of the medic. In the context of the fight against corruption, prosecutors investigated whether the constitutive elements of the bribery offense were met in these conditions. The present study follows the arguments used by lawyers to prove that signing a sponsorship contract between a patient and the medical unit not only cannot have criminal connotations but the most important that the criminal responsibility of the physician involved cannot be attributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governing transnational corporate behaviour is a challenging area that has been canvassed in much academic literature. Transnational corporations make extensive use of regulatory arbitrage and corporate structures in order to avoid or mitigate the reach of legal and regulatory governance. Moreover, international soft law standards that encourage multinational corporations to be more responsible are not always effective or enforceable. Against this context, we explore an emerging regulatory trend in corporate regulation that has the potential to overcome some of the currently perceived limitations in the regulatory governance of transnational corporations. There is an intensifying trend in adopting procedural regulatory strategies for corporations. This involves prescribing various control systems and processes that corporations have to institute, such as compelling them to develop due diligence requirements within their commercial operations. We suggest this is a new milestone in ‘new governance’ design that we call ‘procedural legalisation’. Procedural legalisation is being adopted at an unprecedented level in financial sector and corporate regulation, and offers a new promise in changing corporate culture and behaviour, possibly addressing longstanding limitations in effectively regulating corporations. We present two case studies to explore how procedural legalisation is applied to regulate corporations in the financial sector and in anti-bribery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Taking its point of departure from the decision of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in FHR European Ventures, this article seeks to bring cross-disciplinary perspectives to bear on the question whether an agent should hold the bribe he has received on constructive trust for his principal. Economising models are employed and the results interpreted by reference to the Calabresi and Melamed tripartite scheme of property rule, liability rule and inalienable right. The results are at least three-fold. First, an effective legal rule responding to the problem of harm caused by corruption must recognise and take account of differences between competitive and non-competitive environments and auditing or monitoring possibilities. Second, a property rule fails to do that. Third, ignoring such endogenous and exogenous variables, it overestimates or underestimates the harm suffered by victims of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a unanimous opinion in McDonnell v. United States, the Supreme Court invalidated the conviction of the former Governor of Virginia on charges of bribery and called attention to the critical role that bribery laws play in democratic government. Bribery laws fulfill this function by determining what actions of governmental officials are, and are not, for sale. Bribery laws also undergird the Court's campaign finance cases. Campaign finance doctrine rests on the assumption that a legitimate campaign contribution is distinguishable from a bribe, at least in theory. But is it? In order to answer this question, we need a theory of bribery. This is no easy task. This Article offers a new theory of bribery according to which agreements to exchange official acts for something else only constitute bribery when the value exchanged for the political act is something external to politics. According to this "external value" account, trading a legislative vote for money is bribery, while trading it for another vote is not. An "external value" theory of bribery explains why campaign contributions are controversial. Contributions can be seen as money or politics. However, recent Supreme Court cases treat giving money to the campaigns of political candidates and elected officials as a central form of political participation. But if the campaign contribution is a purely political act, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish a campaign contribution from a bribe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prohibits bribery of foreign public officials in order to obtain or retain business. It is, for all intents and purposes, an anti-bribery statute. To detect bribery, the FCPA contains accounting provisions related to bookkeeping and internal controls. The books and records provision requires issuers to make and maintain accurate books, records, and accounts; likewise, the internal controls provision requires that issuers devise and maintain reasonable internal accounting controls aimed at preventing and detecting FCPA violations. If one considers the analogy that bribery is the "fire" in FCPA enforcement actions, and books and records violations are the "smoke," internal controls are the "smoke detectors. ". The government is increasingly punishing, or threatening to punish, companies for the potential ineffectiveness of these "smoke detectors." Internal controls violations arguably are not substantive violations, but instead are violations arising out of the potential for other violations. The recent increase in the number of enforcement actions alleging violations of the internal controls provision in the absence of any correlating anti-bribery provision violations suggests that enforcement of the Act has (d)evolved to a place well beyond its stated purpose. Additionally problematic is that the internal controls required by the FCPA are not a fixed standard but instead a fairly ambiguous set of recommendations and guidelines that depend on the characteristics of each company and industry. The result of this is overcriminalization and overenforcement of the statute by the government, and overcompliance by the private sector. This Article addresses the alarming shift in the interpretation of the breadth of the statute by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DO)), and discusses the vast theoretical ramifications of this overcriminalization and overenforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2017 the Ministry of Justice issued a call for evidence on a number of options in relation to corporate liability for economic crime. This article argues that it would be rational and effective to bring corporate attribution for economic crime in line with the corporate failure to prevent offence in the Bribery Act 2010. Deferred Prosecution Agreements and Definitive Sentencing Guidelines already assume a commonality in corporate offending across bribery, fraud and money laundering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses two court cases in 2015 and 2016 that focused on improper-hiring practices in violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Past FCPA enforcement actions involving hiring issues are discussed, as well as the hiring practices of the financial services firm Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and telecommunications equipment company Qualcomm Inc. Compliance best practices that should be taken away from the court cases are also recommended by the author.

This paper explores when extraterritorial application of national laws is an appropriate solution to global problems. As a case study, the paper analyzes enforcement of national anti-bribery legislation based on the Anti-Bribery Convention of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD Convention). In recent years, the extraterritorial enforcement of national legislation has increased. The scope of such legislation covers many multinational corporations (MNCs) acting worldwide. While this way of governing MNCs makes it more effective for governments to hold them accountable for a number of global problems they cause, extraterritoriality might serve self-interests of major economies, thus destabilizing markets, principles of international order, and trust among the international community of states. The OECD international anti-bribery regime is an exemplary case to study because some OECD members, such as the U.S., have increasingly been using their anti-bribery laws extraterritorially. Drawing upon the economic and international relations literature, the starting point of the article is that extraterritoriality is appropriate if it serves the main policy goal of the international regulatory regime in which it functions. This article analyzes the main policy goal of the OECD regime, which is based on the principle of competitive neutrality, meaning that all corporations compete on a level playing field. The paper concludes that extraterritoriality is a dynamic phenomenon that is appropriate when used by a small number of major economies in an initial stage of the anti-bribery regulatory framework. In the analyzed case, the increasing anti-bribery enforcement is found to be accompanied by substantive and procedural fragmentation of the underlying legislation that prevents the OECD members from efficiently cooperating, coordinating their actions, and using their full potential to hold MNCs accountable for transnational bribery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the scope of the legal responses to bribery and particularly foreign bribery in the global context. It identifies the corrosive effect of bribery and its negative effect on the economy, before turning to Australia’s mixed response to foreign bribery.Design/methodology/approach The paper is theoretical in nature as a review of policy, and the literature has been the main method used for analysis. Given the increasingly transnational and organised nature of foreign bribery, this paper adopts a comparative approach using Australia as the home base with some comparisons with the UK and the USA.Findings This paper finds that Australia’s response to foreign bribery is improving from a low base, and that this is recognised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Further improvement could be expected if there were strong government leadership and coordination of law enforcement authorities, including the police, corporate regulators and corruption authorities at the Commonwealth, state and territory levels. This paper acknowledges the work of Australia’s unfinished Senate Foreign Bribery Inquiry, which is due to report by 30 June 2017.Practical implications This paper revisits the debate on bribery and the response of law enforcement, highlighting the importance of effective and coordinated law enforcement. The paper will provide background for those analysing the issues with foreign bribery and the solutions for law enforcement.Originality/value The paper enables the reader to gain insights into the problems and causes and effects of foreign bribery. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to, and facilitate, further analysis of the most effective way to deal with bribery and the legal response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]