Question to the Attorney General:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many successful prosecutions for corruption overseas there have been of (1) British companies, and (2) individuals, in the last five years.

Official data regarding prosecutions are held by the Ministry of Justice, but the department does not record it in a form which allows it to distinguish between overseas bribery and domestic bribery.

Whilst not official data, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) record data for their own management information purposes. In the last five years, the SFO has successfully prosecuted three British companies and 10 individuals, nine of whom were British citizens, for bribery or corruption overseas (offences under the Bribery Act 2010 or the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906).

In addition to this the SFO has secured three Deferred Prosecution Agreements with British companies in the past two years for overseas corruption offences. The first agreement included a financial penalty of $25m, plus SFO’s full costs; the second resulted in financial orders of £6.6m and the most recent one was for £497.25m plus interest, as well as a payment of the SFO’s full costs.

CPS’s data measures the outcome of prosecutions against defendants but not on the outcome against individual offences. This information could only be obtained by examining CPS case files, which would incur disproportionate cost.