Vexed Bermoothes

As a small jurisdiction, many of Bermuda’s laws have not been tempered by the fast flow of legal challenges seen in larger countries.  This leads, from time to time, to unhappy circumstances where the law has not kept up … and controversial deeds can only be officially characterised as being “unethical but not illegal”.

A performing legislature would target those laws for improvement.  Mutter, cough, platinum.

The UK current has a new Draft Bribery Bill to update their laws to deal more effectively with corruption – in both the public and corporate sector – whether it occurs in the UK or overseas.  In many respects, it brings the UK law to par with the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, and others.

The new UK Bill clarifies offences relating to bribing and being bribed, the obligation of organisations to prevent bribery, and the global application of the law.  Here’s an interesting line from the Bill:

… even though the actions in question take place abroad, they still constitute the offence if the person performing them is a British national or resident, a national of a British overseas territory or a body incorporated in the United Kingdom.

Oh, really?

The UK made clear in the 1999 white paper concerning the Overseas Territories that it had a responsibility to help the OTs meet the international obligations to which the UK itself had committed (and to which the OTs would be expected to comply should they become independent).

International obligations applying to the Overseas Territories are likely, over the next decade, to become more demanding in many of these areas, in some of which the Overseas Territories themselves lack technical expertise and institutional capacity.  In essence the UK is acting as the transmission mechanism by which an ever growing corpus of global regulation is applied to the territories.  Were an Overseas Territories to choose independence (where this is an option), the implementation of international rules would be a matter between them and the organisation concerned.  But while the Overseas Territories choose to remain British, the UK has the obligation to ensure that they implement such measures.