At its March 2007 meeting, the OECD Working Group on Bribery reaffirmed its serious concerns about the United Kingdom’s discontinuance of the BAE Al Yamamah investigation and outlined continued shortcomings in UK Anti-Bribery legislation. It urged the UK to remedy these shortcomings as quickly as possible and decided to conduct a further examination of the UK’s efforts to fight bribery.
The Working Group, which brings together all 36 countries that have signed and ratified the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, acknowledged that the UK has taken a number of important measures to implement the Convention in the two-year period since a Phase two review of its policies in March 2005 which include extensive awareness-raising about foreign bribery issues.
However, the 2005 Phase two report on the United Kingdom recommended, as did an earlier 2003 Working Group report, that the UK enact modern foreign bribery legislation at the earliest possible date. The Working Group is seriously concerned that this recommendation, which reflected deficiencies of UK law on foreign bribery, remains unimplemented. In addition, UK law on the liability of legal persons remains deficient and the Working Group reaffirms that it should be modified in accordance with its 2005 recommendation.
See full Press Release.
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