[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everyone. You've got questions and we've got answers. Welcome to another Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast.
The Business Ethics Leadership alliance, or bela, is a global ethics and compliance community that provides exclusive access to helpful data, benchmarking events and other resources to advance your ethics and compliance program. And with bella's concierge service, members can submit any question regarding ethics and compliance and our internal experts will provide an answer, plus helpful resources with more information.
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Joining us once again to answer those questions is Bella chair Erica Salmon Byrne. Erica, as always, it's wonderful to see you on the program, Bill.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me back. It's Friday. It must be. Bella asks.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Indeed. Well, we have an enforcement question for you and it reads, how should companies prepare for the new UK France, Swiss Anti bribery, Anti Corruption Alliance?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So just to reset everyone's recollection on this one, Bill, this is an announcement that came out a little bit earlier this year following the Trump administration's announcement in February of a pause on the enforcement of the fcpa. And what the UK Swiss and French authorities came out and said is essentially we are stepping into the breach.
It may be that the Department of Justice in the United States is not planning to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices act anymore, but we have our own anti corruption, anti bribery laws and we are planning to enforce them and in fact, we're going to enforce them together. So it was an announcement of a regulatory intention of coordination between authorities that have spent a lot of time over the last 15 years working with and learning from our own Department of Justice here in the States in a lot of the prosecutions that they have brought in coordination or in, in coalition with the Department of Justice. So you need to take it seriously.
It is absolutely going to be something that, that, that, that we will see action out of the those are three very sophisticated enforcement authorities that are planning to, to take advantage of the vacuum essentially that's been created by the decision on the part of the Department of Justice to pause in enforcement of the fcpa. Now, the good news for companies is the French, Swiss and UK Based anti corruption laws are not different than the Foreign Core Practices Act. So if you have an anti corruption program in place already, then you are well prepared to address what is, what is coming in the event of, of, you know, this, this new coordination between these enforcement authorities.
And the thing, the, the note I would make to, you know, folks who are listening in is, is basically all this is saying to you is that your enforcement risk hasn't gone away.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Right?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: And hopefully you already felt like your enforcement risk had not necessarily gone away because of course, as you and I know well, Bill, the statute of limitations on an FCPA issue is five years, not four. So you know, most of the companies that we partner with, most of the companies that we work with, they were all planning to sort of proceed business as usual from an anti bribery, anti corruption perspective. Because there are so many other jurisdictions in the world where you do see local anti corruption laws. 47 countries now have anti corruption laws in place and you do see enforcement of those laws. What this announcement does is basically say instead of a situation where you might have thought you would be dealing with the UK by itself or the French by themselves or the Swiss by themselves, they have said we are going to be engaged in deliberate cross, cross jurisdictional, cross border coordination with each other. And so that is something that amplifies the resources available to each one of those enforcement authorities because they're able to engage in that kind of coordinated activity. Now, coordinated activity again, as I said, is something we've seen for years, particularly in the anti corruption space. It's absolutely one of the ways that we see many of these cases having developed over the years. And so this is really just a continuation of that without the US having a seat at the table.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Well, it's especially exciting to see this happen just because as we heard at the Global Ethics Summit, incredibly folks came up to us and they said, yeah, we do in fact actually have people rolling up to me and saying, well, with the FCPA walking back, I guess it's okay to bribe now and using that kind of language, which I would have thought as a kind of more incredulous hypothetical. But there are people with boots on the ground going, no, I actually had people asking me this. So seeing this alliance take shape so quickly and so decisively is a really welcome development, I think.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: And those three jurisdictions were absolutely part of the OECD coalition, you know, that, that, that, that was coordinating anti corruption activity. So they're well positioned to continue the enforcement chain that we've seen. And it is a reminder to all the multinationals out there listening, you know, the US is not the only regulator you have to worry about. There's a, there's global network of regulatory authorities and if that is what is motivating your program, then you still do have that particular, you know, piece of motivation behind you. Hopefully what's motivating your program is that bribery is bad for business, but motivated by the regulatory side of things that is very much still in the mix.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Outstanding. Well, Erica, as always, we appreciate you weighing in on these questions from the Bill community. Thanks so much for coming in.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely, Bill. My pleasure. And as I say at the end of every one of these, to all those Bella members out there listening, please keep the questions coming so that I get a chance to come back to talk to my friend Bill.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: To learn more about Bella, visit ethisphere.com bella to request guest access to the member resource hub and to speak with the Bella Engagement Director. If you have a question that you would like answered on this program, contact the Bella Concierge Service and we'll get to work on it for you. I'm Bill Coffin, and this has been another Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast. If this is your first time listening, we hope you've enjoyed the show. For more content like this every week, please subscribe to this program on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also check out full episodes of this show as well as many other free resources at the Ethisphere resource
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