Bribery Act enforcement – a new start

On 9 October 2012, the Serious Fraud Office published revised policies on facilitation payments, business expenditure and corporate self-reporting. [1] Omar Qureshi of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP assesses the change in tone.

Omar Qureshi (+44 (0) 20 7367 2573, Omar.qureshi@ cms-cmck.com) is a partner at CMS Cameron McKenna LLP. He leads the firm’s anti-corruption practice.

The Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) previous guidance, first issued in 2009, was aimed at reassuring business that it would not take an overly-zealous approach to enforcement of the Bribery Act 2010 in relation to facilitation payments and corporate hospitality. It suggested that the SFO would favour civil settlements wherever possible when corporates self-reported wrongdoing and demonstrated the right culture, and it set out the agency’s approach to assessing the adequacy of anti-bribery procedures it expected corporates to have in place. It even offered an opinion procedure on future enforcement action where a corporate discovered wrongdoing in a target company or group during due diligence.