In December 1997, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions was adopted. This document marked a turning point in international law: For the first time, the world’s biggest economies had committed to ban the payment of bribes in foreign countries. In earlier decades, most advanced economies – except for the U.S. since 1978 – had seen such payments as legitimate business expenses meant to facilitate exports and investment.
In December 2017, Transparency International’s German chapter hosted an event to reflect on twenty years of OECD anti-bribery efforts. Some points I found particularly interesting are summarized below. Please accept my apologies for the nerdy focus on details …