OECD Calls For An End To Facilitating Payments Exception

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ("OECD") has called for a prohibition on facilitating payments (or "grease payments") currently permitted under the anticorruption laws of several nations, including the United States. Corruption is a formidable obstacle to economic and political progress in the developing world, and the OECD is at the forefront of an international effort to combat bribery by regulating the practices of companies from the world's wealthiest nations. When the OECD's Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions was created in 1997, however, the Organization advocated laws that would prohibit large bribes and permit small payments for routine government action. Anticorruption advocates have long urged enforcement authorities to abandon this distinction, and the OECD has now joined their ranks. In late November, the OECD recommended that all signatory nations to the Convention review