18/12/14 - The OECD Working Group on Bribery doubts Argentina’s commitment to fight foreign bribery. Argentina still has no law to punish companies for foreign bribery or prosecute its citizens who commit this crime abroad. Widespread delays continue to plague complex economic crime investigations. Executive contact with and disciplinary processes against judges and prosecutors threaten their independence. Urgent action is needed to address these grave concerns. As a result, Argentina will be evaluated again by the end of 2016 to assess progress. A high-level mission will also visit Argentina in early 2016.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery has just completed its report on Argentina’s implementation of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and related instruments.

The Working Group made further recommendations to improve Argentina’s fight against foreign bribery, including:

• Promptly implement the new Criminal Procedure Code; 
• Reduce the very high number of judicial vacancies and the use of surrogate judges;
• Seriously investigate and prosecute all foreign bribery cases as appropriate;
• Encourage companies to adopt measures to prevent and detect foreign bribery; and
• Better protect whistleblowers from retaliation.

The report also notes some positive developments, such as legislative reforms, new agencies for investigating economic crimes, improvements to the reporting of suspicious money laundering transactions, stronger accounting and auditing standards, and awareness-raising efforts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Working Group on Bribery – made up of the 34 OECD Member countries plus Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Latvia, Russia and South Africa – adopted Argentina’s report in its third phase of monitoring implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. The Report lists all of the recommendations of the Working Group to Argentina on pages 62-68, and includes an overview of recent enforcement actions and specific legal, policy and institutional features of Argentina’s framework to fight foreign bribery.

Argentina will submit reports in six months and in one year on progress made in implementing certain key recommendations. As with other Working Group members, Argentina will also submit a written report to the Working Group within two years on steps it has taken to implement the all of the recommendations. This report will be publicly available.

For further information, journalists are invited to contact Lynn Robertson from the OECD Anti-Corruption Division, email Lynn.Robertson@oecd.org; + (33) 1 45 24 18 77.

More information on Argentina and the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention is available at www.oecd.org/daf/anti-bribery/argentina-oecdanti-briberyconvention.htm.

For more information on OECD’s work to fight corruption, please visit www.oecd.org/corruption/anti-bribery/.