Steven Fleming - a member of the Washington DC-based firm’s global disputes practice - told Lawyers Weekly that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) is clamping down on foreign bribery resulting in work for lawyers.
The toughening of bribery enforcement follows an OECD report which slated Australia’s record and dragged its failures into the spotlight.

Compliance programs

Mr Fleming said: ‘There is a mountain of work in the front end putting together compliance programs and ... in a due diligence context when a company is looking at purchasing a company with interests in high-risk jurisdictions; reviewing whether or not there’s any latent corruption in the company [the client] is purchasing.’
The lawyer also flashed a warning to Australian companies expanding into Southeast Asia, Africa and China that they are facing exposure to corruption ‘the likes of which they have never seen before’.