Experience and Practice of Combating Bribery in Officially Supported Export Credits
The evidence so far from the OECD Working Group on Bribery Phase 2 reviews

Discussions on whether or not to improve a multilateral OECD agreement on combating bribery by Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) continue to take place during 2006, after OECD countries failed to reach consensus on doing so in October 2005. Several G8 countries appear to have been blocking significant measures propoposed by the OECD's Export Credit Secretariat (ECG). The ECA-Watch network (of which The Corner House is an active member) submitted this paper to an OECD meeting in March 2006 at which discussions on improving the agreement were set to resume.

The paper analyses comments and recommendations made by the OECD's Working Group on Bribery on ECA practice in combating bribery. These were made during reviews (known as Phase 2 reviews) of how OECD countries are implementing the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

It is clear that the Working Group on Bribery and peer review examiners involved in the Phase 2 reviews regard ECAs as essential to combating bribery. They believe that there is considerable room for improvement in ECA procedures for combating bribery. In particular, the Phase 2 reviews emphasise the importance of ECAs having proper procedures in place for detecting and reporting bribery suspicions to law enforcement agencies, and for excluding companies convicted of corruption from further export credit support.