BNA Insights: Anti-Corruption Risk Assessment and the 2010 UK Bribery Act

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 10, 2012 -- In a current BNA Insights article, Baker Botts Partner Mark Miller writes about how the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 is changing the way U.S. companies should think about anticorruption compliance.

Previously, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (‘’FCPA‘’) was the standard, and the U.S. enforcement agencies had control of the field, Miller states in the opening of his article. The Bribery Act may set an even higher standard, however, and there is an agency — the Serious Fraud Office (‘’SFO‘’) — highly motivated to enforce it, he states.

These developments have given another boost to anti-corruption enforcement on both sides of the Atlantic, and regulators both in the United States and in Europe can be expected to raise their game yet again in response. And as former SFO General Counsel Vivian Robinson stated recently, companies with a business footprint in the United Kingdom should not assume that being FCPA-compliant will automatically make them compliant with the Bribery Act.

One key idea embedded in the Bribery Act is the concept of risk assessment. The U.K. Ministry of Justice has provided a Guidance document setting out six key principles for companies to follow in their anti-corruption compliance programs, and risk assessment is one of those principles. According to the Guidance, a company should ‘’assess[] the nature and extent of its exposure to potential external and internal risks of bribery on its behalf by persons associated with it.‘’ The Guidance goes on to state that such risk assessment should be ‘’periodic, informed and documented,‘’ and should ‘’enable the commercial organisation accurately to identify and prioritise the risks it faces.‘’

This explicit focus on risk assessment has received little attention so far but is likely to receive more and more as companies grow increasingly familiar with the U.K. enforcement regime. It is an axiom of anti-corruption compliance that some countries involve more corruption risk than others.

The complete BNA Insights article is available here.

Mark Miller’s bio is available here.

Background on the Compliance and Enforcement practice at Baker Botts is available here.

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