We provide the complete commercial debt recovery service; from outsourced early arrears collections through to expert litigation, all handled in-house by a multi-award-winning law firm.

 

Visit our debt recovery website

With construction identified as a high-risk industry and many engineering contracts being international, prosecution for a breach of the Bribery Act is a real risk.

Firms will need to be aware of the new guidance on facilitation payments, hospitality and corporate self-reporting introduced by the Serious Fraud Office.

A tougher approach

It has been suggested that the Serious Fraud Office wishes to make clear that it is an investigator and prosecutor, rather than a regulator.

As a result, a toughening of its position seems clear. For example, the Serious Fraud Office has now stated that “corporates cannot be seen to be allowed some special kid glove treatment”.

In line with this statement, the Serious Fraud Office has also stated that “there will be no presumption in favour of civil settlement in any circumstances” This makes prosecutions more likely.

Risky areas for your business

The previous Guidance on facilitation payments, (payments made to smooth the way for transactions), and on examples of legitimate hospitality has been removed.

Whilst the Serious Fraud Office recognises that bona fide hospitality is an established and important part of doing business, they point out that there is a risk of bribes being disguised as hospitality.

As a result, it will deem companies to be using hospitality to encourage or reward improper performance where it is lavish, it lacks a clear legitimate business connection or it is concealed.

How do you protect yourself?

It remains a defence to a charge of failure to prevent bribery for a business to show that it has adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery.

If you have not already done so, we recommend that you put in place appropriate procedures. Existing policies should also be reviewed in light of this change in stance.

Just as important is to ensure that all procedures are followed. For example, it would be wise to record all accepted hospitality, (possibly above set levels), rather than taking a more ad hoc approach. By doing that, matters should not be missed, which is important because unreported hospitality might now be treated as having been “concealed”.

For support with compliance with the Bribery Act, please call us on 01332 226 130 or complete the form below.

SHARE

Share

Scroll to next section

Scroll back to the top

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

For more information on how these cookies work, please refer to our Cookies Policy.

Strictly necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Analytics Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our website. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous.

Force24 cookies & tracking

This website utilises Force24’s marketing automation platform. Force24 cookies are first-party cookies and are enabled at the point of cookie acceptance on this website. The cookies are named below:

F24_autoID
F24_personID

They allow us to understand our audience engagement thus allowing better optimisation of marketing activity.