The Five Biggest Corruption Compliance Lessons From OECD Foreign Bribery Report

On December 2, 2014, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ("OECD") released its ground-breaking Foreign Bribery Report. This report analyzed the 427 foreign bribery cases that have been concluded by the 41 countries that are signatories to the OECD's 1999 Anti-Bribery Convention since its adoption. This is the largest survey of bribery enforcement to date and discredits some key myths and assumptions about corruption risks. More importantly, the OECD Report (the "Report") has a number of notable lessons for how Canadian companies should approach and tailor their anti-corruption compliance programs. This bulletin reviews the five most significant findings in the Report and their implications.