Iceland must do more to ensure its law enforcement authorities are coordinated and adequately resourced to investigate and prosecute economic and financial crime, including foreign bribery, says the OECD in a new report.
The 38-country OECD Working Group on Bribery has just completed a review of Iceland’s enforcement of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and related instruments.
In addition to its recommendation on law enforcement capabilities, the Working Group also recommended that Iceland should:
- Strengthen sanctions for the offence of foreign bribery;
- Step up efforts to raise awareness that the bribery of foreign public officials by Icelandic individuals or companies while doing business abroad constitutes a criminal offence in Iceland;
- Ensure that private sector whistleblowers are adequately protected when reporting suspected acts of bribery; and
- Improve measures to prevent and detect foreign bribery in contracts funded by Icelandic official development assistance.
The Working Group also highlighted positive aspects of Iceland’s efforts to fight foreign bribery. These include, in particular, an enhanced legislative arsenal to facilitate confiscation of the proceeds of bribery, and improvements to the anti-money laundering legislation and general framework in Iceland, which could usefully contribute to the detection of foreign bribery cases. The Working Group noted that there have not been any foreign bribery cases in Iceland, nor are there currently any allegations of bribery of foreign public officials committed by Icelandic individuals or companies.
Iceland’s report is the third to be adopted by the Working Group under its new Phase 3 cycle of monitoring. It contains all recommendations of the Working Group to Iceland on pages 27-30, and includes an overview of recent legal and policy features in Iceland for combating the bribery of foreign public officials. Iceland will make an oral follow-up report on its actions to implement certain key recommendations of the Working Group after one year. Iceland will further submit a written report to the Working Group within two years, which will be the basis of a publicly available evaluation by the Working Group of Iceland’s implementation of the recommendations.