Update on 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit

Many countries were represented at the Summit, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Italy, France and the US, as well as other international organisations such as the IMF, World Bank, OECD and the UN.

Following the Summit, there has been a wave of declarations and commitments from the attendees, including:

• the first ever Global Declaration Against Corruption, committing all countries who attended to work together to “substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms”, by exposing, punishing and driving out corruption
• a Summit Communiqué, setting out a number of steps to tackling corruption that have been agreed by the participating countries, and some international organisations
• an agreement to automatically share beneficial ownership information of companies, trusts, foundations, shell companies and other relevant entities between enforcement authorities in over 40 jurisdictions, including a number of Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies with major financial centers, and
• a series of statements made by individual countries and organisations, setting out the concrete actions they will take in order to tackle corruption.

Commitments made by the UK government at the Summit include concrete legislative proposals, the most notable of which concerns a proposed new corporate criminal offence of failure to prevent economic crime, such as money laundering, fraud and false accounting. For further information on that particular proposal, see our article. Other key announcements include:

• The launch in June this year of a public central register of company beneficial ownership information for all companies incorporated in the UK (for more information, see our article).

• The establishment of a similar register of beneficial ownership information for foreign companies who either (i) already hold property in the UK; (ii) wish to buy property in the UK; or (iii) wish to participate in tenders for central government contracts.

• The introduction of a conviction check process to prevent corrupt bidders from winning public contracts.

• The establishment, in partnership with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Interpol, of an International Anti-Corruption Co-ordination Centre which will be run by the UK National Crime Agency (NCA).

• The establishment of the first ever Global Forum for Asset Recovery, to be co-hosted with the US next year, supported by the UN and the World Bank. It is also worth noting that the UK is currently consulting on changes to the asset recovery regime, including non-conviction based confiscation powers and the introduction of unexplained wealth orders, as part of its Action Plan for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance published last month.

• The launch of an Anti-Corruption Innovation Hub, together with Mexico, France, Ghana, Georgia, Switzerland, Afghanistan, UAE and Indonesia, to support social innovators, technology experts and data scientists to collaborate with law enforcement and civil society on innovative approaches to tackling corruption.

The UK government also took the opportunity to launch the UK Open Government National Action Plan 2016-18, which sets out 13 commitments on transparency, anti-corruption and open government; and to publish a progress update on the UK Anti-Corruption Plan (published in December 2014), which sets out all of the UK’s activity against corruption.

Full details of the anti-corruption commitments made by the UK at the Summit are contained within in the UK’s country statement, available here. The UK has pledged to develop a cross-government Anti-Corruption Strategy by the end of 2016, setting out how those commitments will be implemented.

Please let us know if you would like to hear more about any of these developments.