On March 20, 2025, the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), France's Parquet National Financier (PNF) and the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) announced a new alliance to tackle international bribery and corruption, by way of a "new taskforce to strengthen collaboration."1
In a "Founding Statement" signed by each of the Director of the SFO, Attorney General of the Swiss Federation, and Head of the National Financial Prosecution Office (the Founding Statement), the agencies "recognized the significant threat of bribery and corruption and the severe harm that it causes" and affirmed that they "stand firm in [their] commitment to tackle this threat within the national and international legal frameworks."2
The "Founding Statement" goes on to "establish the International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Taskforce" (the Taskforce) to strengthen the "strong existing relationships" between the SFO, OAG and PNF, and for the Taskforce to deliver:
- "A Leaders' Group focused on the regular exchange of insight and strategy."
- "A Working Group, for the purpose of devising proposals for co-operation on cases."
- "Increased best practice sharing to make full use of [the SFO, PNF and OAG's] combined expertise."
- "A strengthened foundation for seizing opportunities for operational collaboration."
The Founding Statement goes on to say that, by the mutual agreement of the SFO, PNF and OAG, they will invite "other like-minded agencies" to join the Taskforce.
What's new?
In short, there is nothing entirely new.
The SFO, PNF and OAG have long been active in anticorruption efforts and, over recent years, have shown that there is good cooperation between them which has resulted in large multi-agency fines. By way of example, in January 2017, the SFO and PNF conducted a joint investigation (in parallel to an investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice (the US DOJ) and the United States Department of State) in relation to the activities of Airbus SE (Airbus), with the SFO's investigation relating to bribery offences in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Indonesia and Ghana, and the PNF's investigation relating to bribery and corruption offenses in China, Colombia, Nepal, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and Russia. That investigation ultimately resulted in Airbus paying, in a global context, in excess of EUR 3.5 billion in fines, costs and disgorgement of profits. Between 2022 and 2024, various companies in the Glencore Group paid over $1.3 billion in total fines to agencies including the SFO and OAG.
Why, then, is the creation of the Taskforce being announced now?
The significance of the Founding Statement and the creation of the Taskforce perhaps lies in its timing, rather than in its content.
Although in an interview with Global Investigations Review, the Director of the SFO claimed that the idea of creating a Taskforce has been "floating around for some time" and that it "is in no way a reaction to it,"3 the Founding Statement was published a mere five and a half weeks after the White House published its Executive Order (on February 10, 2025). The Executive Order pauses enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the FCPA), asserting that "[s]ince its enactment in 1977, the [FCPA] has been systematically, and to a steadily increasing degree, stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States."4 The Taskforce announcement also followed on the heels of the spring meeting of the working group on bribery of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD), to which the US DOJ, in contrast to their decades-long practice, sent no representatives.5
In the meantime, in the US, counsel and companies with ongoing cases have already felt the impact of the Executive Order. Several FCPA trials of individual executives and others have been delayed while the US DOJ reviews them, a compliance monitorship imposed on Glencore Group was ended a year early, and practitioners with open corporate matters before the US DOJ are experiencing difficulties gaining an understanding of the status of ongoing investigations. At the same time, because the FCPA remains on the books – and there is no expectation that will change – it remains available as a prosecutorial tool if the US DOJ chooses to use it. That fact, in addition to the lengthy statute of limitations that means violations could be prosecuted by a subsequent administration, have generated significant uncertainty in the business community.
Filling the void?
Whatever the reason for the creation of the Taskforce, it seems clear that European law enforcement agencies do not necessarily share the views of the United States that anti-corruption laws are responsible for stifling commerce. Indeed, robustly tacking cross-border economic crime is seen as necessary to "protect our future prosperity."6
The laws in all three of the countries comprising the Taskforce permit, in various circumstances, those authorities to bring cases against not only their own citizens and companies, but also individuals and corporate entities from other countries that engage in foreign bribery so long as there is some jurisdictional hook. There must remain a question, however, as to whether, in the absence of the significant resources of the United States agencies who have historically dominated in investigating international bribery and corruption, the European agencies have the resources to pursue the cases that otherwise would have been pursued by the United States. There appears, however, to be a recognition that the European agencies' roles in international bribery cases will need to increase and that, with or without the involvement of the United States, European agencies plan to continue in their efforts to tackle bribery and corruption.
Footnotes
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-france-and-switzerland-announce-new-anti-corruption-alliance
5. Former officials of the OECD working group on bribery have urged the US DOJ to reconsider the FCPA enforcement "pause," noting among other things that historically non-US companies have figured prominently among these cases (belying the notion that the statue has harmed American companies) and the importance from these these officials' view of the leadership role the US had played in the field of anti-corruption. https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/oecd-lawyers-letter.pdf
6. Solicitor General Lucy Rigby KC MP: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-france-and-switzerland-announce-new-anti-corruption-alliance
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