Overview

Brown Rudnick’s Steven Friel examines the impact of the much-touted Bribery Act 2010 as it comes into full force.

In brief, the Act contains two general offences, offering a bribe (section 1) and accepting a bribe (section 2), and two further offences which specifically address commercial bribery. Section 6 makes it an offence to bribe a foreign public official in order to obtain or retain business or some other commercial advantage. Section 7 creates a new form of corporate liability for failing to prevent bribery on behalf of a commercial organisation.

This article asks whether the Act lives up to all the hype, what it means for both domestic and international companies and looks at the wider media reaction from abroad.