Analysing the impact of the failure to prevent Bribery offence on corporate compliance reporting in the United Kingdom – towards a better model of corporate accountability?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The UK Bribery Act (2010) and its failure to prevent the (FtP) model represent a novel approach to corporate accountability. This approach is gaining traction in other issue areas and jurisdictions as a mechanism to incentivise robust corporate compliance policies. Australia now has a comparable offence of Failure to Prevent Foreign Bribery and the model has also been applied to tax evasion and fraud in the UK. As such, the FtP model is developing into an important feature of the corporate accountability landscape. There have been suggestions that the FtP model should be expanded to address social and environmental harms resulting from transnational business practices and corporate liability for failure to prevent corruption is even being considered under international law, as part of an the effort to establish an International Anti-Corruption Court with jurisdiction over individuals and corporations. However, there remains limited empirical research documenting the actual impact of the FtP Bribery on corporate behaviour. This article remedies this gap in scholarship, providing novel insights by analysing for the first time the impact of the FtP bribery offence on publicly available annual reports. It establishes a foundation for further empirical research on the impact of the FtP model beyond reporting, to corporate practices and decision-making.