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Ten years have passed since the introduction of the UK’s primary anti-corruption law, the Bribery Act 2010 (“the Act”). This article examines the extent to which the Act has lived up to its billing as the international “gold standard”
1 for bribery legislation and looks ahead to future trends in UK economic crime enforcement.
Introduction of Bribery Act Prompted Compliance Overhaul
Section 7 of the Act, which criminalises the failure of a commercial organisation to prevent bribery, has had a significant impact on corporate culture in the UK.
Whereas corporate criminal liability is ordinarily attributed through the ‘identification principle’, where a company’s state of mind is determined by reference to the actions of its senior officers, a section 7 offence is made out if a person associated with the corporate bribes another person and the corporate cannot prove on the balance of probabilities that it had in place ‘adequate procedures’ to prevent bribery. Section 7 therefore lowers the evidential bar for prosecution and reverses the burden of proof.