COMBATTING BRIBERY

To prevent bribery in international business transactions, 28 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) along with Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile and the Slovak Republic (member of OECD since 2000) agreed on "the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions" (Anti-Bribery Convention) on 21.11.1997. After the signing of the Convention by Turkey in December 1997, the Convention was ratified by the Turkish National Assembly on 01.02.2000 with the Act no.4518.

After the enforcement of the Convention, the Export Credits and Credit Guarantees Group (ECG) of the OECD, in which Turkey is represented by the Undersecretariat of Treasury and Turk Eximbank, suggested the implementation of procedures and practices for exchanging information among the member countries in 1998. In this respect, the Group began working on determining some common procedures due on member governments. Accordingly, "Action Statement on Bribery and Officially Supported Export Credits" (Action Statement) was put into effect in 2000.

At the time of reviewing the Action Statement, member countries have reached a consensus for its improvement. In this respect, the revised Action Statement which was agreed on in 2006 included clauses for enhancing measures to be taken by the member countries for combating bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions benefitting from official export credit support. With respect to the importance of the issue, the Action Statement was converted into an OECD Recommendation by the Council Decision dated 14.12.2006.

With respect to harmonization efforts of the Turkish legislation to the OECD legislation, the notion of "combating bribery of foreign public officials", which was first inserted into our domestic law by the Act no.4782 dated 02.01.2003, was also included in the New Turkish Criminal Code (Act no.5237) dated 26.09.2004 and finally amended by the Act. No. 5377 dated 29.06.2005 (Turkish Criminal Code Article 252/5).

With regards to the OECD obligations, Turk Eximbank commenced requiring "Commitments" from exporters benefiting from the Bank's programmes in 2004, in which there were references to the Turkish Criminal Code. The measures to prevent bribery in international business transactions have been enhanced and further improvements have been executed on a program-basis after the adoption of the OECD Recommendation.

Information about examination of Turkey carried out by OECD Working Group on Bribery is available on the web-page of Ministry of Justice as the coordination unit. (http://www.uhdigm.adalet.gov.tr/oecd/oecd.htm)

Last saved: October 10, 2008

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