Research On The System Of The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

With the development of economic globalization, commercial bribery becomes borderless and spreads worldwide. To win more overseas-orders, multinational corporations bribe officials from both foreign government and international organization. Foreign corruption violates the fair competition principle of the market and worsens the regulation of the international trade and investment. It has become an important factor that block the sustainable development of the international trade and economy. The “FCPA” including the anti-bribery provisions and accounting provisions, is a US statute governing foreign corruption. On the one hand, the anti-bribery provisions state that conducting overseas bribery is charged as criminal offense and make detailed provisions on the elements of the crime. On the other hand, the accounting provisions require that every company shall establish and maintain a system for controlling and tracking internal activities. These two provisions prohibit overseas bribery from different perspective by imputing. As the first law of overseas bribery provisions, the “FCPA” plays an important role in the judicial practice and achieves good results. With the growing of the multinational corporations as well as the problem of foreign corruption, some developed countries begin to revise and amend their national legislation of international commercial bribery by referring the “FCPA”. Internationally, the “FCPA” becomes an important model and has substantial signification for both regionally international law and globally international law. By studying the “FCPA”, this paper will discuss the contents which may be referred by China. This paper has five parts. Part I discusses the definition of foreign corruption, the reason that causes foreign corruption and the harm of foreign corruption. In addition, this part will also discusses the various positioning of foreign bribery by different countries. Part II to Part IV will discuss the specific provisions of the “FCPA” including the anti-bribery provisions, accounting provisions and liability provisions. Finally, this paper will discuss the problem existing in current legislation in China, for example, the scope of criminal subject matter is narrow, the criminal charge is not enough and so on. So in the end, this paper will give some suggestions for improving the anti-foreign corruption legislation in China by referring the “FCPA”.