Is civil recovery effective in settling overseas corruption investigations, asks David Corker
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is increasingly using civil recovery to settle corruption investigations. On 22 July it announced that it had terminated its criminal investigation into Macmillan Publishers Ltd in connection with suspected corruption of government officials in African countries in relation to the award of contracts. This is the third settlement concluded so far this year compared to a total of two during 2009 and 2010.
Macmillan did not self-report and decided to co-operate with the SFO long after it knew that it was the target of a bribery investigation. No papers or statement of the case were published. The SFO press release indicated that the outcome was justified because it had agreed to a civil recovery order whereby it paid £11m to the Treasury (with £4m of that being routed back to the SFO). Macmillan also admitted that “such public tender processes were susceptible to improper relationships being formed” and that “it was impossible to be sure that the awards of tenders to the company in the three jurisdictions
