OECD: Ireland must amend laws to combat foreign bribery

Ireland has been criticised by the OECD Working Group on Bribery for failing to improve its domestic law to tackle bribery by Irish business people and companies in international dealings.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald assured the Working Group that Ireland has a strong commitment to the convention and that legislative reform is advancing.

Ireland is a signatory to the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, and is therefore subject to monitoring by the working group.

The Convention was ratified in 2003 but Ireland has yet to prosecute a case of foreign bribery and points to the failure of the OECD to review its law on corporate criminal liability so it can be effectively applied to cases where senior managers of companies use subordinate employees to commit bribery offences.

Ireland has been subject to closer scrutiny since it failed to act on a Working Group warning issued in December 2013 that its domestic law required to be amended to deal with three major weaknesses in its provisions for dealing with foreign bribery.

The Working Group contends that Ireland must consolidate and harmonise its two foreign bribery offences. It is particularly concerned that the offences, one in the Prevention of Corruption Act 2001 and the other in its Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud) Offences Act 2001, potentially contravene each other and carry substantially different maximum prison sentences of ten years and five years respectively.

The Working Group considers Ireland’s continued reliance on the common law “identification” principle as inadequate in tackling bribery as it is now practised.

It is also concerned that Ireland has not acted on the Working Group’s recommendation to ensure that its money laundering offence in the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 applies to Irish companies and individuals that launder the proceeds of bribing foreign public officials — even if the country where the bribery takes place does not have a foreign bribery offence.