Europe Forms Anti-Corruption Enforcement Team

Stay on your toes, compliance officers! Britain, France, and Switzerland have announced the launch of a new anti-corruption taskforce, meant to keep up the pressure against corporate bribery and corruption even as the Trump Administration retreats from it.

The leaders of the U.K. Serious Fraud Office, the Parquet National Financier in France, and the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland made their announcement during an anti-corruption event in London on Thursday. They declared that their agencies “stand firm in our commitment” to fight corporate corruption, and will work to develop more cross-border cooperation and skill in prosecuting corporate bribery. 

“The commitment we have made today reaffirms our individual and collective commitment to tackling the pernicious threat of international bribery and corruption, wherever it occurs,” Nick Ephgrave, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said in a prepared statement. “We will make use of every power and partnership available to confront this criminality.”

The group is formally called the International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Task Force. Ephgrave, along with Jean-François Bohnert of the PNF and Stefan Blättler, attorney general of Switzerland, said the taskforce will start with three goals:

• A “leader’s group” focused on the regular exchange of insight and strategy;
• A lower-level working group that will devise principles for cooperating on cross-border cases;
• A body of best practices so that prosecutors in all three countries can “make full use of our combined expertise.” 

They also said the taskforce will invite other “like-minded agencies” to join in the future. 

That’s pretty much the whole declaration, which is only one page long — but the symbolic value is what matters here. Europe is warning everyone that it will at least try to maintain the momentum of anti-corruption enforcement. Global corporations and their compliance teams will need to take that seriously.

Anti-Corruption Without the FCPA

The grand question here is how European enforcement agencies will maintain that momentum without the United States. For example, Britain, France, and Switzerland all do have anti-corruption statutes on their respective books, and they have occasionally reached their own settlements with corporate bribery offenders in cases that arose from FCPA prosecutions in the United States. 

I just can’t recall any significant corporate bribery settlement that arose from European law enforcement without the participation of the United States. (If you know of any examples, please email me at mkelly@radicalcompliance.com to let me know; I’ll also keep digging into the question in coming days.)

That said, anti-corruption enforcement has come a long way over the last 15 years, when Britain led the charge in Europe by bringing its Bribery Act into the modern era. France, Italy, and other countries across the continent followed suit, and now anti-bribery statutes modeled on the FCPA are standard fare across Europe. So at least the statutes are there as a foundation.

Plus, Europe can now look to a large body of FCPA resolutions that have already happened. I’d never describe prosecuting a corporate bribery case as easy, but the task is rather clear and well-understood now. Heck, plenty of the largest FCPA cases were done in coordination with European partners; so those offices do have some institutional knowledge, even if it’s not as extensive as what exists in the United States. 

For global corporations, however, one question to ask about all this is, quite simply, who cares? Your organization needs strong anti-corruption capabilities, regardless of any specific changes in the enforcement climate right now. That was true when President Trump announced a pause in FCPA enforcement several weeks ago, and it’s true as Europeans announce that anti-corruption enforcement will continue now. 

Risk assessment, policy management, third-party due diligence, training, internal reporting: large corporations need all those capabilities to achieve compliance with misconduct settlements, sure; but they also need those things to navigate today’s complicated and uncertain business environment. 

As your board and senior management teams ask for your analysis of the anti-corruption landscape, focus on that latter point. That’s what matters most, and coincidentally it helps to preserve the importance of a strong compliance function.