Reacting to concerns raised by business leaders, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice announced in February that the country’s new Bribery Act—due to go into effect on April 1—was being pushed back once again, this time indefinitely. A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said officials would use the delay to consider changes to a law that many consider much harsher than the United States’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Left unmentioned was whether a fresh look would be given to one of the act’s more unusual provisions: that under certain, narrow circumstances, it permits bribery.
The loophole in question, officially dubbed Section 13, says that bribes paid by spies working for the government’s intelligence and security services are exempt from scrutiny, as long as the payoffs are deemed to be in the national interest.
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