Multinational organisations operating in the PRC are increasingly aware of the need to comply with US and UK laws, following a number of recent high profile corruption cases pursued by authorities in the US and the UK. Organisations that overlook Chinese anti-corruption laws, however, do so at their own risk.
The PRC has an extensive anti-corruption regime that, particularly in recent years, has been aggressively enforced by its more than two million strong policing authorities. In 2010, Chinese authorities conducted over 119,000 corruption-related investigations. The Beijing municipal corruption agency alone has indicted and convicted over 25,000 people on corruption charges.
While PRC authorities have historically focused on the demand side of the bribery equation, in recent years they have begun to delve into the supply side investigating alleged payments by the likes of Rio Tinto, Toyota, Carrefour, McDonalds, Whirlpool, McKinsey & Co. and ABB.
If this recent attention to...