Anti-Bribery Progress: Indefinitely Delayed?
May 23rd, 2011
In 1999 leaders from OECD countries took a big step. They committed to holding their companies to account for their behaviour abroad. Until then, bribing abroad to win contracts had largely been tacitly accepted and was even a tax deductible expense in at least 14 OECD countries.
Twelve years on, progress with implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention is in danger of grinding to a halt. For seven years, Transparency International (TI) has monitored how well governments live up to their promises and enforce the OECD Convention. This year’s progress report, for the first time, shows no improvement in the number of countries enforcing the Convention, with the same countries in the same enforcement categories as in last year’s report.
By the end of 2010, the seven countries in the active enforcement category were known to have sanctioned at least 185 individuals and companies, but the other 30 countries, accounting for more than a third of world exports, are only known to have sanctioned 60 (according to our Table B).