Australia: Who's greasing those palms of international bribery?
Last Updated: 7 March 2012
Article by Kim Middleton and Kiran Bath

What your company needs to know about the international smorgasbord of anti-corruption law

Anti-corruption watchdogs around the globe are cracking down on corporations implicated in foreign bribery offences.

Just recently, Leighton Holdings fessed up to the AFP about possible breaches of Commonwealth anti-bribery laws with respect to operations in Singapore, Iraq and Indonesia. Last month, the UK's Serious Fraud Office successfully convicted four company directors on multiple counts of commercial bribery for which they received lengthy jail terms and in December last year a former Government Minister of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was sentenced to death for the offence of receiving bribes.

There is a palpable global effort on the part of enforcement agencies to seriously investigate corporations and officials for acts of corruption. The long-arm jurisdiction trend is spreading and the laws are toughening. While this need not dissuade Australian companies from expanding their businesses into "high risk" markets where corruption is rampant or even accepted custom, it does require all companies to thoroughly review the policies and codes currently in place for dealing with risks of corruption.

While a facilitation payment is commonly accepted in some jurisdictions, it is an indictable offence in others. What is considered hospitality or a gift could be construed as commercial bribery. You don't even need to have been present or even have knowledge about the bribe occurring let alone turn a blind eye to it in order to be caught by some of the new laws, and it's not only Australian companies with a UK presence that we're talking about. Additional laws introduced in the PRC now affect non-PRC companies who are in PRC-organised joint ventures or non-PRC companies who have representative offices in China.

So if you're one of the many Australian companies that do business overseas, we think you should check who counts as an "associated person" to your company. You should also consider taking out insurance to cover those costly investigations in the event of an audit. And since in the UK failing to prevent bribery is a strict liability offence, you should ask whether your current procedures are good enough.

We do not disclaim anything about this article. We're quite proud of it really.

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