In the study, “Identification and Quantification of the Proceeds of Bribery ,” experts analyzed and compared existing measurement frameworks in the US, UK, Indonesia, Germany, South Africa and Switzerland to be considered as starting points for countries who have yet to implement official measures for identifying and numerically quantifying how much money a briber makes as a result of his bribe and determining how much money can be fairly confiscated.
The report used examples from actual bribery cases to illustrate these procedures and show how governments successfully quantified and recovered criminal assets.
“This report is important because it is the first one that categorizes the main methods used in calculating ill-gotten gains across different legal systems,” StAR Coordinator Jean Pesme stressed. “In many countries, the idea of penalizing bribery is perceived as too complicated to be seriously pursued.” Pesne says that the report provides a set of practices describing “all potential scenarios” in practical terms for anti-bribery professionals.
The study acknowledges that there are a number of different existing methods for sanctioning, but having a unified legal system is of paramount importance. For example, US practitioners use a method based on net revenue to calculate penalties: a company would be ordered to pay the total cost of the contract, plus the cost of the bribe, minus the cost of the goods.
The United Kingdom uses the gross revenue method, in which the amount to be confiscated does not make adjustment for the cost of goods. For example, if a company paid a bribe of US$1.1 million and made a profit of US$9.1 million, the company would have to pay US$9.1 million.
