A construction firm has become the first corporate to be convicted under the UK’s Bribery Act 2010. The SFO (Serious Fraud Office) opened a criminal investigation into Sweett Group PLC in July 2014 in relation to its activities in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. In February 2016, Sweett Group PLC were sentenced and ordered to pay £2.25m. For more on the case, visit the SFO website.
Alun Milford, Serious Fraud Office General Counsel, said in a March speech: “Whilst it is not for us to give advice on anti-bribery compliance, the well-publicised guidance is something that we have in mind when we investigate cases. The guidance has plainly been drafted by people with an understanding of how bribery occurs. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that it gives an indication of some of the lines of enquiry that interest us.
“Intermediaries and agents are a classic red flag, particularly where they are purporting to offer assistance in winning business in a country other than the one in which they are based. Only last year the OECD reported following a study of 427 foreign bribery cases from across the world that in the vast majority of such cases the bribery was carried out via an agent or intermediary. Agents or intermediaries are of real interest to us, therefore. Our natural curiosity is piqued further if those agents or intermediaries take the form of companies based in a jurisdiction that permits beneficial ownership to be concealed.
“Finally, good, ethical companies can be victims of corruption, and this brings me to my final point. If a law abiding company, whose ethos and compliance systems do not allow it to pay bribes, loses out on business to a bribe-paying company, we want to know about it. It may be that we have jurisdiction to investigate that company even if it is not British. If we do not have such jurisdiction, we have good connections with overseas law enforcement authorities who might: 80 per cent of world’s exports are made by the 41 member states of the OECD, all of whom are obliged to criminalise the bribery of foreign public officials. So, tell us about it. We’re all ears.”
For that speech to an audience of compliance managers at the European Compliance and Ethics Institute, Prague, visit the SFO website.
