Anti-Bribery & Corruption (ABC)

In April 2011, the UK Bribery Act 2010 came into force - marking a new era in Anti-Bribery & Corruption (ABC) enforcement.

The Act has global reach and can apply to any company, based in any country, that has a connection to the UK.  And although its purpose may be broadly similar to that of the American Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, with which many companies are already familiar, the Bribery Act differs in several important respects.

Most notably, Section 7 of the Act creates a strict liability offence of ‘failing to prevent bribery’ which can result in unlimited fines and automatic debarring from public contract tenders.  The only defence a company can establish under Section 7 is to satisfy the court that at the time the bribery occurred, it had ‘adequate procedures’ in place to prevent bribery.

The introduction of the Bribery Act means that corporations all over the world must review, and if necessary, upgrade their Anti-Bribery & Corruption policies and procedures.  But what will ‘adequate procedures’ entail for a given organisation?  And moreover, how can they actually be implemented in an effective and sustainable way?

To help resolve these questions, BMR has developed a comprehensive operational approach to Bribery Act compliance.  Embracing all stages of the compliance process – from policy design through implementation, validation and ongoing operation – our approach identifies the components that companies need to have in place in order to be assured that they have an effective Section 7 defence. 

In addition, we have developed an approach to monitoring and review - as discussed in Principle 6 of the draft guidance on adequate procedures - using Transaction Monitoring and data mining methodologies.  These techniques use focused scenarios to target specific bribery and corruption risks – leading to improved detection of suspicious activity and helping companies better to demonstrate the ‘adequacy’ of their anti-bribery procedures. To download a copy of our latest discussion paper on Transaction Monitoring, click here.

To find out more about the BMR approach to ABC compliance, contact Sarabjeet Singh on +91 (99) 1034 5454 or Tim Haveron Jones on +44 (7866) 496912.