Mexico has improved, but needs to give greater priority to the criminal enforcement of bribery and ensure that its criminal law enforcement authorities have all the resources and expertise they need to seriously investigate all allegations, according to a new OECD report.
The OECD Working Group on Bribery has just completed a review of Mexico’s enforcement of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and related instruments.
The Working Group also recommends that Mexico:
- Take action on pending legislation to further combat corruption, in particular amend and enforce its law on corporate liability for foreign bribery;
- Expand its law on confiscation of the bribe and its proceeds and ensure that confiscation is routinely applied in practice;
- Continue to improve the level and speed of its responsiveness to mutual legal assistance requests involving foreign bribery-related cases;
- Clarify explicitly that bribes to foreign public officials are not deductible for tax purposes;
- Enact legislation to protect whistleblowers in the public and private sectors; and
- Amend its legislation to clarify that external auditors must report crimes discovered during audits to law enforcement authorities, and that auditors who report are protected from reprisals.
The Working Group also noted positive aspects of Mexico’s implementation of the Convention, including efforts and high-level commitment to raise awareness of the risks of foreign bribery within the private sector. The Mexican government has shown commendable leadership in fighting corruption-related money-laundering in the Financial Action Task Force.
The Working Group – made up of the 34 OECD Member countries plus Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Russia and South Africa – adopted Mexico’s report under its third phase of monitoring. The Report lists all the recommendations of the Working Group and includes an overview of Mexico’s legal and policy framework for combating the bribery of foreign public officials. As with other OECD Working Group members, Mexico will submit a written report to the Working Group within two years, which will be the basis of a publicly-available Working Group evaluation of Mexico’s implementation of the Phase 3 recommendations.