Сборник текстов для перевода. Борисова Л.А. - 25 стр.

       More than 10 years ago this country led the negotiations to create the
Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International
Business Transactions. Before the Olympics' luster began its downhill slide,
some expected it could take another 10 for all the signatories to enact such laws.
       What the convention does, simply, is criminalize bribery in business
transactions. That sounds odd here but not in the bigger world, where many
countries permit tax deductions for money that greases palms.
       Convention backers – the 29 industrialized nations comprising the Or-
ganization for Economic Cooperation and Development – call it a tremendous
step in recognizing a problem affecting more than S30 billion yearly in interna-
tional contracts. Awareness could grow even more due to the taint on sports
competition and the expected depth and ramifications of investigations into it.

      Justice Department Takes Notice
       While the International Olympic Committee is investigating the Salt Lake
City payoffs for its own housecleaning, the U.S. Justice Department is taking a
look, too. Whether the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, on which the con-
vention is modeled, might be used to bring criminal charges is a gray area at the
early stages of investigations. The federal act concerns bribery of public offi-
cials, and the Olympic committee is private.
       However, “Some of the ingredients in this scandal appear to be FCPA vio-
lations”, says Stanley Marcuss, who was a Senate Banking Committee staffer
involved in crafting the legislation en acted in 1977. Marcuss, a partner in the
Washington office of Bryan Cave, is director of the big-business Coalition for
Fair International Business Practices.
       The federal law came on the heels of U.S. business involvement in scan-
dals in Japan and Europe.
       If criminal charges were to be filed against some of those involved in
bringing the 2002 Winter Olympic Games to Salt Lake City, says Marcuss,
“That would do an awful lot to get people to sit up and take notice that the
FCPA can have pretty wide ramifications-especially now with the bribery con-
vention and other countries preparing to enact their own Versions of the law”.
       The corrupt practices act had amounted to unilateral disarmament for U.S.
businesses competing in not-always-ethical world trade. Now it might provide
guidance to other countries as they deal with the Olympics scandal and craft
their own anti-corruption laws to comply with the convention.
       It was the lopsided effect the act had on American businesses that
prompted U.S. officials to push for the convention.
       “The convention is a tremendous breakthrough,” says Fritz Heimann, who
wears several hats. He is a special counsel to the general counsel of General
Electric Co., and a member of an advisory committee to an Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development working group that will monitor vari-
ous nations' legislative efforts to ensure they comport with the convention.
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