Outlawing bribery of foreign officials

Tony Colman, MP for Putney, proposed the Bribery of Foreign Public Officials Bill in Parliament on 14 March. Designed to implement the 1997 OECD Anti Bribery Convention, it would be the first revision in UK bribery legislation since 1916. Under current law it is not an offence to make payments to foreign government officials in order to win a contract and the sums may be set off against UK tax. The new legislation would make such behaviour a criminal offence as it would be in the case of payments made to UK public officials in England and Wales; the authority would be extra-territorial even when all parts of the offence took place overseas; the Serious Fraud Office would be assigned powers to investigate and prosecute suspected corruption of foreign public officials and the Attorney General’s permission would not be needed to launch an action. Speaking on the introduction of the new bill, Lawrence Cockcroft, chairman of the UK branch of Transparency International, an independent organisation that works to improve government accountability and combat corruption, said, “This bill provides the UK with an excellent opportunity to come into line with other OECD countries and so end an embarrassing period under successive governments where the UK has been perceived as dragging its heels in the fight against international corruption.”