Corporate Governance

OECD Provides Guidance for Anti-Bribery Compliance Programs

By Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance

In March 2010, a working group of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (?OECD?), representing the thirty OECD member nations and eight other countries (the ?Working Group?), issued its much-awaited Good Practice Guidance for anti-bribery compliance programs. For global companies, this represents what could well be the most significant set of compliance and ethics (?C&E?) program expectations ever promulgated, as we briefly describe in this memorandum.

Background: the ?how? and ?why? of good C&E programs

Nearly nineteen years ago, the U.S. government established an original and compelling model for promoting legal compliance by businesses. This new approach was set forth in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organization (the ?Sentencing Guidelines?), which offered companies both strong incentives for implementing C&E programs and meaningful guidance on how to do so.

Since then, a small number of other nations have followed this lead, at least in limited ways. But until recently, there had been no true global acceptance of the Sentencing Guidelines? strategy of providing business organizations with incentives (the ?how?) and methodologies (the ?why?) for adopting strong C&E programs.

Click here to read the complete post...

Full post as published by The Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog on May 23, 2010 (boomark / email).