Legal News

Britain Backpedals on Bribery Act

By Nathan Koppel

Lawyers, company executives, and politicians have been waiting feverishly for guidance on how to apply the U.K’s new Bribery Act, the supercharged corruption law dubbed the FCPA on steroids.

Well, the wait is over. The British government today offered guidelines here that some believe indicate that the U.K. has caved into pressure to soften its bribery law, which is due to take effect July 1, the WSJ reports.

For example, the guidance says that gifts and hospitality, which were thought to be verboten under the Bribery Act, will not be prosecuted so long as they are “reasonable and proportionate,” WSJ reports.

Also, the guidelines appear to reduce the geographical scope of the law by saying that companies with subsidiaries or listings in the U.K. may not be impacted.

We have gotten a flurry of emails from law firms parsing the guidelines.

“The final guidance itself clearly [aims] to reassure companies that the Bribery Act will be applied with common sense,” Covington & Burling lawyer Robert Amaee said in an emailed statement.

Freshfields chimed in by noting that the guidance indicates the U.K. has “no intention of seeking to prohibit corporate activities aimed at building corporate relations and promoting business.”

Or, as Freshfields partner Paul Lomas put it: “Many will be relieved to know that the trip to Twickenham is still on the cards.”

Trip to Twickenham? The reference is completely lost on us, but we’ll guess Mr. Lomas is referring to the fine sport of rugby.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 30, 2011 (boomark / email).