Corruption is a structural feature of commercial and political life in a significant proportion of the world’s economies, and UK businesses operating or investing in these markets face a specific combination of risk: the practical pressure to engage in corrupt practices in order to participate in the market, the legal exposure created by the Bribery Act 2010’s failure-to-prevent offence if those practices occur through associated parties, and the reputational consequences of being associated with corruption regardless of legal liability.
Bond Rees investigates corruption concerns in emerging markets for UK businesses, their legal advisers, and the international development and financial institutions that are active in these environments.
The Emerging Market Corruption Landscape
Corruption in emerging markets takes a wider range of forms than the bribe-for-contract model that is most commonly discussed. Political corruption — the capture of regulatory and licensing processes by political interests — creates risks that are difficult for a UK business to navigate even with the best compliance programme. Bureaucratic corruption — facilitation payments demanded at every step of a commercial process — creates practical pressure that compliance policies alone cannot fully address. Judicial corruption — the unreliability of legal redress in the event of a dispute — affects the risk calculus for significant commercial commitments.
Investigation Approach
Corruption investigations in emerging markets require on-the-ground capability: investigators with the language skills, the cultural knowledge, and the local contacts to gather intelligence in environments where formal records are unreliable and where much of the relevant information is carried by people rather than documents. Bond Rees deploys this capability through our established network of partner investigators in key emerging markets, coordinated from our UK base and producing findings to our UK standards of evidence and documentation.
Investigating corruption in an emerging market? Contact Bond Rees for expert international investigation.
