International Construction Law Review
ANTI-BRIBERY LAWS: SOME COMPARISONS BETWEEN GERMANY AND THE UK
GILES DIXON1
GEORG GOESSWEIN2
DR OLAF HOHMANN3
Giles Dixon, Solicitors, Richmond-upon-Thames, England
LL M, Attorney at Law, Kressbronn, Germany
Attorney, Eisenmann Wahle Birk, Stuttgart, Germany
Introduction
The OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions4 has been ratified by 38 countries. Germany was one of the first to introduce implementing legislation, in 1999, and the new law has had a significant impact on business, with some high profile cases—and a big shift in attitude for a country in which bribery was previously a tax-deductible expense for companies trading internationally. The UK, having made some amendments to existing anti-corruption legislation in 2002, has only recently implemented the Convention in full, with probably the most far-reaching statute of any of the Convention countries and even the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The UK’s Bribery Act 20105 came into effect on 1 July 2011.
The UK legislation
In England, bribery is historically a common law offence, the law having developed over several centuries. Around 100 years ago three major laws were passed—under the Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act 1889 bribery
1 Giles Dixon is an English solicitor with substantial international experience who has his own eponymous law firm—see www.gilesdixon.com He is a contributing author to Schmitthoff’s Law of International Trade and recently wrote an Anti-Bribery Code of Conduct template in collaboration with the International Governance & Risk Institute (GovRisk) which is published by ContractStore: www.contractstore.com
2 Georg Goesswein is an attorney-at-law, Kressbronn, Germany.
3 Dr Olaf Hohmann is an attorney at the Stuttgart office of the law firm Eisenmann Wahle Birk. One of his specialist areas is compliance and prevention consultancy. He is a member of the committee of the Stuttgart Lawyers Association and the author of numerous publications in the field of criminal and criminal procedural law (including commentaries on commercial criminal law standards in the Munich commentary on the StGB; author and co-publisher of a commentary on the StPO).
Pt 1] Anti-Bribery Laws: Germany and the UK
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