Exploring Voluntary and Mandatory Compliance Programmes in the Field of Anti-Corruption

Abstract

The introduction and development of mandatory anti-corruption compliance for large companies in the French legal system, as an alternative to the voluntary compliance models incentivised by other jurisdictions, raises fundamental issues about these approaches’ strengths and weaknesses. These models reflect different strategies for allocating legal controls among public and private actors, which affect the overall distribution of costs and benefits in preventing offences. Notwithstanding the existence of distinctions between systems based on mandatory and incentivised compliance programmes, this chapter argues that there is a common trend towards creating obligations to reform and effectively implement compliance. In light of these recent developments, critical analysis is devoted to the ever-growing public control exercised over corporations that has resulted in the introduction of compulsory or quasi-compulsory compliance requirements through laws or non-trial resolutions. A final reflection focuses on whether the introduction and expansion of mandatory compliance can positively impact crime prevention, or might have the paradoxical effects of increasing public and private costs, breaking the public–private partnership, and reducing effective compliance with the law.