OECD slams Britain's corporate bribery record

LONDON: OECD member-states have written to Britain criticising London's failure to deal with corporate bribery, the Financial Times said on Sunday.

According to the business daily's website, the letter was sent in June, around a month before the House of Lords, Britain's highest court, overturned a ruling that British anti-corruption investigators acted unlawfully by stopping a probe into a huge arms deal between Saudi Arabia and defence giant BAE Systems.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sent a team of anti-bribery experts to Britain in April to compile a report on London's corruption-fighting efforts, which is due to be completed in October.

A spokeswoman for Britain's Department for Business confirmed that a letter had been received from the OECD, and said it "raises questions about developments since the April examination visit" but insisted that Britain was making good progress.

Citing people familiar with the letter's contents, the FT said that the letter was approved by all of the 37 members of the OECD's anti-bribery group except Britain.

The newspaper said that one person who had seen the letter described it as "particularly undiplomatic", as it criticised Britain for failing to bring a single overseas corruption case to court, or update its anti-bribery laws.

"The UK is totally committed to meeting international obligations and goes further than OECD Anti-Bribery Convention requirements in many area," said the Department for Business spokeswoman.

"On top of this, we will bring forward a draft Bribery Bill for parliamentary scrutiny in the next session, to reform and modernise our law."

Britain's Serious Fraud Office had been investigating claims that BAE Systems, one of the world's biggest arms makers, ran a 60-million-pound (75-million-euro, 110-million-dollar) slush fund for Saudi officials in a bid to attract contracts, but ditched the probe in 2006.