Bribe, Swindle or Steal

Peter Solmssen joins the podcast to talk about his work, together with a group of experts, in support of the OECD Working Group on Bribery’s revised Recommendation relating to settlements. He discusses how “individual heroism” by prosecutors should not be required to reach settlements and he shares his thoughts on the benefits the revised Recommendation will bring not only to companies, but also to prosecutors and to the larger goal of reducing corruption.

Mark Morrison, National Practice Group Leader of Blakes’ Business Crimes, Investigations & Compliance group, joins the podcast to discuss Canada’s performance to date as a party to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and what the revised Recommendation might mean for Canada.

Ryan Murphy, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Cyber, Risk & Regulatory Platform and lead on PwC's U.S. Investigations & Forensics Services Practice, joins the podcast to discuss audits:  what the term means, what assurance they should and should not provide and how they can be used for nefarious purposes.

Wendy Wysong of Steptoe & Johnson, TRACE’s Partner Law Firm in Hong Kong, joins the podcast to discuss recent new guidance from China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Applying only to bribes paid within China’s borders, the guidance highlights some challenges for companies operating in China, particularly with respect to multi-country settlements.

Leah Ambler, Director, Corruption Prevention at the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and former Legal Analyst at the OECD, joins the podcast—in her personal capacity—to discuss her excellent chapter on Whistleblower Protections. Leah discusses the importance of whistleblower protections to reducing corruption and the challenges inherent in these protections in the absence of comprehensive, harmonized legislation.

Yana Gorokhovskaia of Freedom House joins the podcast to talk about transnational repression, the increasingly common abuse and intimidation by states of their citizens living abroad. Yana discusses Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and Roman Protasevich, whose plane was forced to land in Belarus where he is still being held, but also refers to the hundreds of other cases that don’t make the news. Freedom House has released an excellent report on this problem that can be found at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression

As is holiday tradition, we're revisiting our podcast with Peter Hellman, who describes Rudy Kurniawan’s audacious scheme to defraud wine collectors in his excellent book, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire.

Penelope Kyritsis, Assistant Director of Research at the Worker Rights Consortium, discusses the detention of China’s Uyghur Moslem minority, in internment camps. Uyghurs have been compelled to work in these camps, primarily in Xinjiang. But they are now also separated from their families and relocated to factories across China, making it difficult for companies to undertake meaningful due diligence on forced labor in their Chinese supply chains.

Nicola Bonucci, former Legal Director at the OECD and now a partner at Paul Hastings in Paris, joins the podcast to discuss the 2021 OECD Anti-Bribery Recommendation announced in November. We also chat about the challenge of advancing an international consensus on anti-corruption enforcement amongst Working Group on Bribery (WGB) members hailing from different legal systems.

As part of the many events marking International Anti-Corruption Day this week, The Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute (VACI) will launch 9 December in Vancouver. Peter German, president of VACI—and of its host organization, the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform & Criminal Justice Policy—joins the podcast to discuss the need for this initiative, its focus and some of its goals.