On 17 December 1997, in Paris, the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions was signed. The Negotiating Conference had adopted it on 21 November 1997. The authentic texts are English and French. The depositary is the Secretary-General of the OECD.

Article 1 requires each Party to establish as a criminal offence the intentional offering, promising or giving of any undue pecuniary or other advantage, whether directly or through intermediaries, to a foreign public official, for that official or for a third party, in order that the official act or refrain from acting in relation to the performance of official duties, in order to obtain or retain business or other improper advantage in the conduct of international business. Complicity, including incitement, aiding and abetting, or authorisation, and attempt and conspiracy, shall be offences to the same extent as for bribery of the Party’s own public officials. A foreign public official includes any person holding a legislative, administrative or judicial office of a foreign country, whether appointed or elected; any person exercising a public function, including for a public enterprise; and any official or agent of a public international organisation. Foreign country includes all levels of government.

Article 2 requires liability of legal persons, in accordance with each Party’s legal principles. Article 3 requires effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties, comparable to those for bribery of the Party’s own public officials, and, for natural persons, deprivation of liberty sufficient to enable mutual legal assistance and extradition. Where criminal responsibility of legal persons is not applicable, effective non-criminal sanctions, including monetary sanctions, shall apply. The bribe and the proceeds, or property of corresponding value, shall be subject to seizure and confiscation. Article 4 establishes jurisdiction when the offence is committed in whole or in part in its territory and, if the Party prosecutes its nationals for offences committed abroad, according to the same principles; the Parties shall consult when more than one has jurisdiction.

Article 5 provides that investigation and prosecution shall not be influenced by considerations of national economic interest, the potential effect upon relations with another State or the identity of the natural or legal persons involved. Article 6 requires an adequate statute of limitations. Article 7 extends money-laundering legislation to bribery of a foreign public official, where the Party has made bribery of its own public official a predicate offence, without regard to the place where the bribery occurred. Article 8 prohibits off-the-books accounts, inadequately identified transactions, non-existent expenditures and false documents used to bribe foreign public officials or to hide such bribery, with effective penalties.

Article 9 requires prompt and effective legal assistance, including in non-criminal proceedings against a legal person; dual criminality shall be deemed to exist if the offence is within the scope of the Convention, and bank secrecy shall not be a ground for refusal. Article 10 deems bribery of a foreign public official an extraditable offence; a Party that declines to extradite its national shall submit the case for prosecution. Article 11 requires notification of a responsible authority. Article 12 places systematic follow-up in the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, unless the Parties otherwise decide by consensus.

Article 13 opens the Convention, until entry into force, for signature by OECD Members and by non-members invited to become full participants in the Working Group; thereafter accession is open to the same categories. Article 15 provides that the Convention shall enter into force on the sixtieth day after five of the ten countries with the largest export shares set out in DAFFE/IME/BR(97)18/FINAL, representing at least sixty per cent of the combined total exports of those ten, have deposited their instruments. Those conditions were later met; the Convention entered into force on 15 February 1999. If it had not entered into force by 31 December 1998, two declarations of readiness would have sufficed. Article 16 governs amendments by consensus. Article 17 allows withdrawal by written notification; withdrawal takes effect one year later, without prejudice to pending requests for assistance or extradition.

It is not the United Nations Convention against Corruption, opened at Merida on 9 December 2003. It is not the Council of Europe Criminal Law Convention on Corruption of 27 January 1999. It is not the OECD Recommendation of 2009, revised in 2021.

Image: Château de la Muette, OECD headquarters, Paris; MySociety, 19 March 2019; CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. Treaty text: Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, Paris, 17 December 1997.