The UK Bribery Act — Britain’s New Legal Landscape

Abstract

The UK Bribery Act came into force three months after guidance from the Ministry of Justice was published. The Act creates four main offenses. It criminalizes both demand-side (the act of demanding, asking for, or agreeing to accept a bribe) and supply-side (giving, promising to give, or offering a bribe) bribery. It creates a separate offense of bribery of a foreign public official, and a new corporate offense of failure to prevent bribery. This last offense criminalizes a corporate that fails to prevent bribe paying by those who perform services on its behalf. It is an absolute defense to this “failure to prevent” offense if the corporate can demonstrate that it had adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery.