A new report by TRACE International finds that enforcement actions against bribing government officials are rising globally. In its 2016 Global Enforcement Report, the anti-bribery organization observes a doubling in US enforcements last year and non-US actions doubled since 2015.
“2016 was a record year for global anti-bribery enforcement,” said Alexandra Wrage, president of TRACE International. “The United States has been concluding enforcement actions at an unprecedented rate, other jurisdictions have been stepping up their prosecution rates as well, and new anti-corruption laws continue to be passed worldwide.”
The US has been the historic standard-bearer for anti-corruption actions. American prosecutors have been penalizing companies for bribery offences for 30 years. It appears from this report that they are not slowing down. US enforcement actions doubled in 2016. Since the FCPA’s passing in 1977, TRACE calculates that 70% of all enforcements were made in the USA. Of these, 46% concerned bribes paid to Asian officials and a quarter to civil servants in the Americas.
Another stand-out statistic reveals the rising number of prosecutions within China. As demonstrated by TRACE’s heat map, bribes to Chinese public officials were the most likely penalized. Although this is partly a consequence of economic scale – the world’s most populous state attracts significant corporate investment – but also the finding demonstrates the payoff from its recent anti-corruption efforts.
The country has recently outlined intentions to shake up its anti-corruption system. Since President Xi Jinping rose to prominence in 2012, he has sought to uproot the networks of corruption that have ensnared the country since the revolution. The campaign has targeted both the ‘tigers’ (those high level officials that commit grand corruption) and ‘flies’ (more junior officials, whose petty theft saps the political system of moral strength).
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