Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Addison Rogge, and today we're talking about anti-bribe reinforcement outside the United States.

Please join me as we listen in to Nicola Banucci, former General Counsel of the OECD,

as he presents at the Trace Forum on Global Anti-Corruption efforts.

Here's Nicola.

Let me first very quickly recall what we have been experiencing the last 25 years,

basically since the OECD Inter-Barbabre Convention entered into force, it's 1999, but let's say

it's 2000 doesn't really change. I think we can distinguish three periods. And again, you know,

all those lines can be argued, but by and large, I think these three periods correspond to

some reality. So in the first period, basically the years 2010, even though the convention was in force

and countries started to adopt legislation and adopted legislation to transpose the convention

into their domestic legal framework, I think it's fair to say that the US was still very much the single game in town.

Why is that?

For a number of reasons.

First, because when you introduce a new offense, like most of the European countries or other

countries like Japan and Australia did, it always take a bit of time to have the

offense being really not only in the books, but also understood by the prosecutors.

And also maybe because there was a bit of, we have to do it because it's a treaty obligation,

but let's not hurry attitude.

I use for that a quote that the French minister, former minister of finance,

uses very often in the speeches that he addresses to French audiences when he was complaining about the US authorities overstepping what he believed to be overstepping competence by investigating

and prosecuting a French company, he addressed Chuck and say, you know, why are you really

...