The LEHMAN, Lee & Xu China
Visa & Immigration Newsletter
keeps you up to date on recent developments in China inbound and outbound Visa & Immigration
Compliance is Global
Everybody knows about the FCPA, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which the United States uses to guard against and criminalize actions like bribery committed by USA corporations and individuals abroad. The FCPA focuses primarily on giving “gifts” or bribes to foreign government officials. Fines can be in the multi-millions of dollars.
What you may not know is that China has its own law against similar practices. Buried in China’s Criminal Law is a single Article criminalizing bribery of foreign officials. Of course China has other laws criminalizing bribery of Chinese officials and commercial (B2B) corruption as well.
Global compliance risks are compounding for multinational companies. Now a single act of bribery, somewhere in Asia, elsewhere may result in Criminal fines in the USA, and China. But wait, there’s more! The UK also has a stringent anti bribery law. Where the FCPA has a small exception for “grease payments” small payments to an official to encourage the timely completion of a task the official is obligated to perform in any case, the UK Bribery Law has no such exception. For its part the Chinese law is vague on the issues of “grease payments.”
For global visa and mobility professionals, the way forward is education, training and due diligence on local partners and agents worldwide. If you are dong business in China, ask your China lawyer to perform due diligence on your partners. The same applies to your operations in the rest of Asia, and everywhere else. Consider replacing non-lawyer agents with local law firms with a specialized visa and mobility practice.
Strong local contracts are also important. A strong and enforceable contract will not only educate your local partners about the problem of corruption, but will ensure they have some “skin in the game” to incentivize them to stick to your anti-corruption policies.
This document has been created for educational purposes for clients, potential clients and referrers of services to LEHMAN, LEE & XU, and to alert readers to the services provided by LEHMAN, LEE & XU. It is not intended to serve as definitive professional or legal advice, and should not be relied upon as such. LEHMAN, LEE & XU does not endorse any personal opinions which may be contained herein.
You may share this document with your friends or colleagues, either by forwarding the e-mail edition to them (provided that the contents of the e-mail edition, including all notices, are preserved in their entirety), or by directing them to the online edition here. You may use short excerpts from this document in your own work (provided that each such excerpt shall not exceed three sentences in length; no more than twenty percent of this document, by word length, may be excerpted; no more than twenty percent of your work, by word length, may consist of such excerpts; each such excerpt shall be attributed to LEHMAN, LEE & XU, with such attribution to include the Internet address of the &XU). All other rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you opted in at www.lehmanlaw.com, or via social media.
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list
