Ireland ‘slow to fight’ cross border corruption

Ireland is among 18 of the 44 jurisdictions with 22% of world exports that have the lowest enforcement status. Similarly rated countries include Russia, Turkey, and Bulgaria.

Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and the US with a 27% share of world exports all actively enforce the convention.

The latest edition of the Exporting Corruption report from the anti-corruption organisation rates countries on their enforcement levels against foreign bribery.

One of the report’s key findings is that only one in four world exports come from countries with active law enforcement against companies bribing abroad.

All of the countries are rated based on their enforcement against foreign bribery under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention.

The convention was ratified by Ireland in 2001 and made it a crime for Irish companies to bribe officials overseas.

The report welcomes the recent enactment of new anti-corruption legislation but points out that Ireland has yet to prosecute any company alleged to have bribed foreign officials.

Transparency International Ireland chief executive John Devitt said the Government deserved credit for updating the law on bribery and corruption. However, they were concerned that not enough resources and political energy were spent on tackling the problem.

“There have been no prosecutions for foreign bribery and Ireland has recently been threatened with legal action by the European Commission for failing to transpose the latest EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive,” said Mr Devitt.

“In the meantime, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation has recently amended the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 which means that whistleblowers who share commercially-valuable information when exposing bribery and other crimes could face prosecution.”

Several recent money laundering investigations or cases brought in other countries have mentioned the use of Irish shell companies. Irish banks are also accused of failing to prevent the laundering process of proceeds of corruption from overseas.

The report finds there is no publicly available information about the number of complaints, investigations or files referred for prosecution or cases where no prosecution took place in Ireland.

Also, Ireland does not publish statistics on requests for mutual legal assistance from other jurisdictions.

It says the current situation makes it difficult to determine how proactive the Government is in responding to allegations of bribery and related money-laundering from overseas.

It is just over 20 years since the convention was adopted and the report says its multilateral approach to international corruption was needed more than ever.

Developed countries, in particular, have a self-interest and an obligation to tackle the problem, it says.

The report says that “top priority” should be directed to cases of grand corruption involving politicians and senior public officials.