UK Pledges Anti-Bribery Cooperation with French, Swiss After US Retreat

(Bloomberg) — British, French and Swiss prosecutors agreed to form a new intelligence sharing partnership in a bid to tackle overseas corruption following the pullback of US authorities from international bribery cases.

The three senior prosecutors announced the initiative Thursday in London, unveiling plans to boost cooperation in their pursuit of cross-border bribery and money laundering cases. The group plans to “pool our resources when we have the right investigation or prosecution to pursue,” Nick Ephgrave, the Serious Fraud Office’s director said in an interview.

The signing, with the heads of France’s Parquet National Financier and the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, took place against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s decision to pause enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a pillar of global anti-corruption legislation. In Europe and the UK, agencies have long relied on the US to share leads and bring some of their biggest cases to fruition.

“We continue to work with the Americans, we’ve always been working with the Americans. So will the Swiss, so will the French,” Ephgrave said. “Clearly you know domestic priorities have shifted over there and so be it.” He added plans to boost coordination had been underway before the US pause.

The US has long played a role in bringing overseas corruption cases to trial, with powerful tools at its disposal. It can claim jurisdiction to pursue a case simply because a suspicious transaction was conducted in dollars. The threat of harsh sentences — sometimes far longer than those permitted in Europe — and the strategy of incentivizing whistleblowers has also been crucial to white-collar cases.

“There are reasons why the Americans have been able to create a body of work, we have all benefited from it,” Ephgrave said. He said that he wants to offer rewards to whistleblowers, saying that as many as 700 UK whistleblowers had spoken with US authorities in the last 10 years.

The testimony of a former trader, first secured by US investigators, played a major role in securing a guilty plea from Glencore Plc in the UK. 

Earlier this year Switzerland secured the conviction of Trafigura and its former chief operating officer for bribery, the first time a senior executive at a major commodity trading house has been found guilty of corruption.

“We have to collect all intelligence we have, and we have to put this intelligence together,” Stefan Blättler, the Swiss attorney general said in the interview.

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