Posted on March 30, 2011 by Rosanne Kay

At Last, The Bribery Act 2010 Adequate Procedures Guidance is Here

This post was written by Rosanne M. Kay and Tom Webley.

The waiting is over! At last the UK Ministry of Justice has published guidance about procedures which commercial organisations can put into place to prevent persons associated with them from bribing. The Act will now come into force on 1 July 2011.

The guidance offers non-prescriptive procedures and commentary on the scope of the Act. As the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Kenneth Clarke, said this morning in his statement on the publication of the guidance "These are quite tough rules. But what the guidance I am also publishing today underlines – after helpful consultation with businesses, and NGOs – is that combating bribery is about common sense, not bureaucracy."

At the core of the guidance are proportionality and risk assessment which should give comfort to those small and medium sized enterprises worried at the prospect of having to spend a fortune on putting in place complex, burdensome polices and procedures. Of limited comfort is the Secretary of State's indication that there will not be a large number of prosecutions and certainly not for trivial cases but these decisions are not his to make and will be decided by the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Director of the Serious Fraud Office. 

Click here for more information about the guidance.

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Posted on April 29, 2010 by Rosanne Kay

The Bribery Act 2010 - What it means for you

This post was written by George Brown, Matt Stone, Simon Hart, Sarah Wolff, and Jim Sanders.

The Bribery Act 2010 (the "Act") which recently was passed by Parliament has far-reaching implications for any business which is either registered in the UK or which has any part of its operation in the UK. The breadth and importance of this legislation means that corporates and their senior officers would be well advised to familiarize themselves with the effects of this new law.

 Why is this legislation important to you and your business? The Act includes:

  • A new corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery: this is a strict liability offense: a company's guilt can be a result of an attempted or actual bribery on the company's behalf;
  • "Senior officers" (including non-board level managers) can individually be held criminally liable for a company's bribery offenses;
  • Extensive extra-territorial powers of prosecution similar to those found in the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA");
  • Offenses apply to both public and private sectors (unlike the FCPA);
  • No carve-out for facilitating or "grease" payments (unlike the FCPA)
  • Conviction could mean debarment from all public sector contracts within the European Union.

This legislation comes at a time of increased international co-operation between regulators not only in matters relating to bribery, including enforcement of the FCPA, but in connection with financial fraud, insider dealing and related activities. The extensive powers provided by the Act will be used by UK enforcement agencies such as the Serious Fraud Office ("SFO") to clamp down on corrupt behavior. The Bill received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010 and its various provisions are likely to be bought into force over the next six months.

To view the entire client alert, please click here.

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