What is the likelihood that an employee at one of your companies will be asked to pay a bribe in Mexico this year? Or if a rogue employee pays a bribe, will you catch him?
These are two questions that haunt companies in the current international business and regulatory environment. Recent corruption prosecutions and legislative changes relating to business in Mexico reflect an increased emphasis on combating corruption risks.
Given the overlapping jurisdiction of the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the UK's Bribery Act, and analogous Mexican laws, companies need to understand their exposure to such risks to evaluate the effectiveness of their internal controls and to ensure that they are designed to protect the company from potential criminal and civil liability.
The US sentencing guidelines, which govern the standards by which corporations prosecuted for US federal law violations will be evaluated, state that an "organisation shall periodically...