Q. I am a director of a company which does a lot of business overseas. I have been told that a new Bribery Act will come into force later this year and that this contains provisions which will affect my business. Could you briefly summarize the effect of this Act please?
A. The Bribery Act repeals our old and outdated bribery laws and replaces them with an updated version which some commentators have described as the toughest anti corruption legislation in the world. Most notably for businesses, the Act creates a new offence which means that a commercial organization is guilty of an offence if a person "associated" with it bribes another person intending to achieve a business advantage.
Your company could therefore be liable for an offence if, for example, a business partner, supplier or agent commits an offence on your behalf, even if you didn't know about it. Furthermore, senior managers and directors can be personally liable if they have "consented to" or "connived in" the offence. The penalties include up to 10 years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine and can lead to confiscation of your property. The Act has a near-universal jurisdiction, allowing for the prosecution of an individual or company with links to the United Kingdom, regardless of where the crime occurred.
Q. What can I do to protect myself from these risks?
A. If you can show that your company has in place adequate procedures designed to prevent bribery then this will provide you with a defence. It is therefore important that you start a risk assessment of your business now to consider the nature and extent of the risks to which your company is exposed and, if applicable, you prepare and embed policies and procedures to prevent bribery. The Government are obliged to provide further guidance upon this later in the year and the Act will not come into force until at least three months after this guidance has been made available.
