The Bribery Act 2010

The UK Bribery Act was passed in April 2010 and consolidates previous legislation as well as sets out new elements and offences.

Key features of the legislation include:

• It applies to both public and private sector
• In simplest terms it sets out two key offences: the giving and receiving of bribes
• A new element is that it makes it now an offence for an organisation to fail to prevent a bribe being paid on its behalf (an organisation can be excluded from this if they can show they have adequate systems and procedures in place to prevent bribery).
• There is also an additional element that makes bribing foreign public officials an offence (in line with the OECD ant-bribery convention).