India ranks second in probes on foreign bribery, enforcement drags globally

China showed the highest prevalence of alleged bribery by foreign firms.

Enforcement actions globally slowed down in 2019 against trans-national bribery cases, but India is at the second place after Brazil in terms of the number of investigations concerning alleged bribery of domestic officials by foreign firms, a report said on Thursday.

China showed the highest prevalence of alleged bribery by foreign firms, followed by Iraq, Brazil, Nigeria and India, as per the 10th Annual Global Enforcement Report of TRACE International, a non-profit business association that tracks trends in global anti-bribery investigations and enforcement.

The report said 2019 was a relatively slow year for enforcement actions in transnational bribery cases.

Both global and US enforcement numbers in cases involving bribery of foreign officials dropped, with a 19 per cent decrease in US enforcement actions and a 45 per cent dip in non-US enforcement actions, the data showed.

While the financial services industry remained a focus for US anti-bribery enforcement authorities, companies in the extractive industries faced the most US investigations in 2019.

There was also an increase in US investigations into bribery of foreign officials in the aerospace, defense and security industries. In non-US investigations, extractives remained the most investigated industry, followed by engineering/construction and aerospace/defense/ security.

As of the end of 2019, Brazil was conducting the most investigations concerning alleged bribery of domestic officials by foreign companies, followed by India and China, TRACE said.