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15 September 2015
Every country in the world prohibits their citizens from bribing government officials. But it is equally accepted that most countries did not criminalize bribery of foreign government officials until the late-1990s, and enforcement of those laws has historically been weak outside of the United States. According to data released in 2013 by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), over half of the forty signatories to the OECD's anti-bribery convention had yet to impose any sanctions for cross-border corruption.
But a confluence of factors, including increased international cooperation amongst enforcement agencies and public outrage caused by recent global scandals like Petrobras and FIFA, have caused an undeniable sea change in the enforcement statistics over the past few years. According to the TRACE 2014 Global Enforcement Report ( GER), non-U.S. enforcement actions have more than doubled since 2012, and in 2014 non-U.S. enforcement actions concerning bribery of foreign officials outnumbered U.S. enforcement actions for the first time. Continue reading. | 
