Welcome back to the podcast, bribed, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today we're in Berlin to talk about the German enforcement and compliance landscape.

My guest is Dr. Christian Sheffold, who is a member of Denton's corporate practice here in Berlin.

Denton's is Trace's partner law firm, and so we're very grateful to you for your support.

Prior to joining Denton's, Christian led the compliance consultation function at Daimler.

Thank you for joining me.

Thank you.

I think in the anti-bribery community, at least.

Germany is probably the best known jurisdiction outside of the United States because of some of the very substantial cases that started here, not here in Berlin, but in the Munich prosecutor's office.

Can you give us just a broad overview of enforcement in Germany?

Unfortunately, Germany has a bit of a history of Priory.

Until 1999,

Priory outside of Germany and outside the European communities

was not sanctionized in no way and it was supported because you can you could deduct this

from your taxes sure just as a business expense as a business expense so when I started my

professional career I was told then when we go to East Europe, for example, that we should go to the

accounting department upstairs and they have a safe. And if I needed money to easier get

passports or to get over-control or to get things solved, I just go there and I would

get up to a thousand marks and could go then and deal with the issue,

for example, in Belarus or in other countries. So this was a usual practice until 1999,

after a lot of intervention of the OECD and political interventions, Germany decided first to

stop the tax deduction and very quickly

thereafter also to have this as a criminal offense.

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