The Facilitation Payment Exemption Is Gone – It's Time To Revisit Your Anti-Corruption Compliance Program

Finally, with elimination of the "facilitation payment" exemption, a little-known loophole in Canada's foreign anti-corruption law has been closed.  However, there is now a need for extra-careful consideration of international business behaviours that may have previously been taken for granted.

Canada's Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (the "CFPOA") contained, until October 30, 2017, an unusual provision permitting the payment of certain small bribes to foreign public officials.  Known as the "facilitation payment" exemption, this provision permitted companies and individuals to make payments to "expedite or secure the performance by a foreign public official of any act of a routine nature that is part of the foreign public official's duties or functions."  That exemption has now been repealed.