New Bribery Act In Force
About Jennifer Haworth
Jennifer Haworth is a Director in the firm’s Litigation & Dispute Resolution team. Jennifer has a wide practice in all aspects of civil and commercial litigation both in Bermuda’s courts as well as in mediation and arbitration.
Jennifer Haworth’s full profile on mjm.bm.
In December 2016, the legislature in Bermuda passed the Bribery Act 2016 (the “Act”) which came into force on 1 September 2017. The Act is based on the UK Bribery Act 2010.
In the past, there were several separate laws dealing with bribery and corruption offences in Bermuda, such as the Criminal Code 1907 (Section 111 Official Corruption and Section 112 Extortion By Public Officers), the Parliament Act 1957 and the Parliamentary Election Act 1978. But as of 1 September, we have one comprehensive statute that sets out bribery offences in Bermuda, including the offence of failure of commercial organisations to prevent bribery, a strict liability offence for which the only defence is for a commercial organisation to demonstrate that it had ‘adequate procedures’ to prevent bribery.
MJM attorneys have been actively studying the Act and providing bribery related training to clients and members of our staff. We also advise organisations in relation to ‘adequate procedures’and the drafting of policies aimed at preventing bribery.
For more details, including a link to the Ministry of Legal Affairs Guidance Notes, see our earlier post New Bribery Act Coming Into Force from August of this year. And click here to view the Act in its entirety.