Traction engine – UK v. foreign bribery

The UK’s record on combating foreign bribery is surely improving – a world first with the public register of people with significant control (more accurate, if clumsy, than the term ‘beneficial owners’) over a company; a deferred prosecution agreement with Rolls-Royce, which paid £497,250,000 plus £13m costs – the largest criminal settlement in English legal history (albeit with questions hanging over why the company wasn’t driven into court after more than two decades of corrupting public officials in seven jurisdictions); and a London-led global anti-corruption summit last May.