The Bribery Act 2010 is perhaps the most significant piece of legislation to be enacted in the UK for more than a decade. Its scope and application present some significant operational, strategic and managerial issues for organisations based or operating in the UK, or for those operating overseas and managed by UK nationals. The aim of the legislation is to make businesses refocus and re-evaluate their activities both in the UK and overseas.

Within the Act, the most significant development is the creation of the new corporate offence of failure to prevent bribery in the UK and overseas, subject to a defence of having “adequate procedures” in place to prevent bribery by people associated with the organisation.

It applies equally to the public and private sectors and the offences it creates are broadly drawn, potentially criminalising a wide range of business-related behaviours, from engaging with suppliers, promoting sales to customers, appointing agents, structuring joint ventures and negotiating acquisitions.

Cobbetts has developed a Bribery Act package that can be tailored to suit the requirements of individual businesses. We can design and implement bespoke risk assessments and help you assess the bribery risks across the various facets of your business operations. We can also design adequate policies and procedures, helping you to deliver and implement them via bespoke staff training. We can then help you institute monitoring and review procedures to help identify issues as and when they arise.

In addition to providing advice and representation in the event of a bribery or corruption investigation or prosecution, we can provide ongoing or ad hoc legal support. This could be operational, including the review of commercial agreements, compliance policies and HR processes. It could be or strategic, for example, in the context of transactional support for acquisitions, disposals and joint ventures or in relation to commercial litigation relating to commercial losses arising out of third party bribery and corruption activities.