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Bribery Bill becomes law, but how ready is UK PLC?
This new legislation replaces a mixed bag of outdated and ineffective laws dating from 1889, brings the UK in line with the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and aims to make the UK a better place for conducting business. Despite a spate of recent bribery and corruption cases both in the UK and overseas, many companies are unprepared for the Bribery Bill and need to act on this as the highest priority.
Mark Dunn, Risk Market Planning Manager, at LexisNexis points out, “Companies best equipped to deal with the new law are likely to be those that have already implemented systems and controls to tackle anti-money laundering and as a result have resources in place that can be expanded to cover checks on third-party agents. For the rest of UK PLC, and this new law impacts a much wider spectrum of companies, C-level executives are going to have to move quickly to assess their risk profile, find the resources in their organisation to tackle the necessary due diligence and set up robust processes.”
The new offence of failure to prevent bribery puts the onus on companies to review their current business processes and controls and to be able to demonstrate robust compliance with the new law. This may involve training staff on their obligations and more importantly assessing the company’s exposure to the risks of bribery and corruption from those third-parties who represent the company’s interests overseas. Companies at most risk are those operating in emerging markets and that may have relied on a network of agents, distributors and other contractors to establish and grow their business on the ground. Conducting additional third-party due diligence checks and ongoing monitoring measures together with regular audits to account for expenditure are some of the new processes that may be introduced by companies to help them comply with the new legislation.
Bribery Bill at a glance
The new legislation focuses on several key areas:
- creates offences of offering, promising or giving of a bribe and requesting, agreeing to receive or accepting of a bribe either in the UK or abroad, in the public or private sectors
- creates a discrete offence of bribery of a foreign public official in order to obtain or retain business
- creates a new offence in relation to commercial organisations which fail to prevent a bribe being paid by those who perform services for or on behalf of the organisation.
All offences carry a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, with the exception of the offence relating to failure to prevent bribery, which carries an unlimited fine. Where a director is convicted of bribery, they may also be disqualified from holding a director position for up to 15 years.
Find out how LexisNexis can help with Third Party Due Diligence