The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed, in the second reading and as a whole, a law implementing Ukraine’s accession to the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (Bill No. 15056).
According to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent, during a parliamentary session on Tuesday, November 10, the decision was supported by 247 members of parliament, with no votes “against” and 10 abstentions.
The document brings the provisions of current national legislation into line with those of the international Convention and stipulates that bribery of any foreign public officials or members of international parliamentary assemblies is a criminal offense.
To implement these objectives, amendments have been made to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine, and the Law “On Preventing Corruption.” In particular, the law aligns the definition of the term “official of a foreign state” with the terminology of the Convention, standardizes provisions regarding the application of criminal law measures to the legal successors of legal entities, and allows for the appeal of an investigating judge’s ruling on the application or refusal to apply restrictions on the activities of a legal entity during a pretrial investigation.
In addition, it is stipulated that authorized representatives of a legal entity—namely, individuals who, in accordance with the law, the legal entity’s founding documents, a contract, instructions, or other oral or written authorizations, have the right to act on behalf of the legal entity or represent its interests—are required to take measures to prevent corruption. As previously reported, the bill was adopted in its first reading on May 26.
bribery, CORRUPTION, LAW, LIABILITY, PARLIAMENT
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