Global Anti-Corruption: UK Bribery Act & OECD

The FCPA was a pioneer, but it's no longer alone. Anti-corruption is now a global web of mutually reinforcing laws, and the exam will put you in cross-border scenarios where more than one applies. The two pillars to know alongside the FCPA are the United Kingdom's Bribery Act of 2010, often called the toughest anti-bribery law in the world, and the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, which knit dozens of countries together against foreign bribery.

Understanding how these differ from the FCPA is exactly the kind of distinction the CFCS likes to test. The exam favors questions where conduct is legal-ish under one regime but plainly illegal under another, a facilitation payment, say, that the FCPA tolerates in narrow cases but the UK Act forbids outright. The practical answer in those scenarios is almost always to apply the strictest applicable standard, because a multinational has to satisfy every law it touches at once.

The UK Bribery Act 2010 is broader than the FCPA in two important ways. First, it isn't limited to public officials: sections 1 and 2 criminalize giving and receiving bribes in any context, including purely commercial, private-to-private bribery. Section 6 separately covers bribing a foreign public official.

Second, and crucially, the Act has no facilitation-payment exception, so the small grease payments the FCPA tolerates in narrow cases are simply illegal under UK law. For a multinational, that means the strictest standard usually wins: design your program to the UK Act and you comfortably clear the FCPA. Note the jurisdictional reach too: the Act bites any organization that carries on a business or part of a business in the United Kingdom, even one headquartered elsewhere, so a foreign company with a London office can be prosecuted for conduct abroad.

And because it covers private-to-private bribery, a kickback between two commercial firms with no government official anywhere in sight is squarely within its scope.

The Act's most influential innovation is section 7: the corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery. If a person associated with a commercial organization, an employee, agent, or subsidiary, pays a bribe to win business for the organization, the organization is strictly liable, even if leadership knew nothing about it. There is one defence, and it's a powerful idea: the organization can show it had adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery.

In other words, your compliance program isn't just good practice; under section 7 it is literally your legal defence. The exam loves this: a strong, well-documented program can be the difference between liability and acquittal. Official UK guidance frames adequate procedures around six principles, proportionate procedures, top-level commitment, risk assessment, due diligence, communication and training, and monitoring and review, so a program that exists only on paper will not qualify.

The exam lesson is that under section 7 the burden effectively shifts to the company to prove its prevention measures were real, which is why documentation and consistent enforcement matter so much.

Sitting above individual statutes is the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, adopted in 1997. It's a treaty obliging each signatory, dozens of countries, to make bribery of foreign officials a crime under its own law and to enforce it. Its real teeth come from peer monitoring: countries review each other's enforcement and publish the results, which pressures laggards to act.

The Convention's purpose is to level the playing field so companies in member states can't gain an edge by bribing abroad. When a scenario spans multiple OECD countries, this is the framework tying them together. Two points the exam draws out: the Convention reaches the supply side of bribery, those who pay foreign officials, rather than the officials who take, and it deliberately removes the old practice by which some countries let companies deduct foreign bribes as a business expense.

Its peer-review mechanism, often run in phases, is what converts a paper treaty into sustained enforcement pressure on signatory governments.

Two practical risk concepts close this out. Politically exposed persons, or PEPs, are individuals entrusted with prominent public functions, and their family and close associates. They aren't criminals by definition, but their position carries higher corruption risk, so FATF Recommendations 12 and 22 call for enhanced due diligence, including understanding their source of wealth and source of funds.

And third-party intermediaries, agents, consultants, and joint-venture partners, remain the number-one channel for bribes, which is why due diligence on them is non-negotiable. Recap: the UK Bribery Act is broader and stricter than the FCPA, its section 7 makes your program a legal defence, the OECD Convention harmonizes the field, and PEPs and intermediaries are where corruption risk concentrates. One refinement to carry forward: FATF treats foreign PEPs as inherently higher risk requiring enhanced measures, while domestic PEPs and those at international organizations are assessed on a risk-sensitive basis, a distinction the exam likes to probe.

And being a PEP is a risk indicator, not an accusation, so the correct response is heightened scrutiny, never an automatic refusal. Next up: sanctions. Test yourself first.