Compensating the Victims of Foreign Bribery

The United Kingdom has committed to using the proceeds of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) in foreign bribery cases to compensate the victims of corruption in low-income countries. It has executed this policy by making direct payments to foreign governments and injecting capital into infrastructure projects that support vulnerable populations. However, this policy has come under intense scrutiny because the capital put towards compensation is statistically insignificant compared to what the government retains for itself. Seizing on the immediacy of these criticisms, this Article explores why the United Kingdom’s policy of compensating the victims of foreign bribery has faltered and proposes realistic suggestions for improvement to the extant DPA regime. Its aims are threefold. First, to study how victim compensation operates in practice. This involves an interpretation of understudied regulatory guidance documents, an analysis of international best practices with a particular focus on the United States and Canada, as well a description of the normative dimensions of the applicable international law framework. Regarding this last point, the Article argues the United Nations Convention Against Corruption does not require states to share the proceeds of corporate settlement agreements. Second, this Article analyses recent judicial decisions and develops the argument that, in approaching the task of approving corporate settlement agreements, courts and regulators have attempted to transplant principles from adjacent fields of law which have proven wholly inapposite. Decisionmakers have borrowed too heavily from the law regarding compensation orders. These orders, designed to assist individual victims following the conviction of a natural person, have proven unsuitable for corporate corruption cases resolved prior to trial. Relatedly, courts have adopted a narrow understanding of compensation that is fundamentally at odds with the explicit terms of applicable government policy. Finally, this Article advances five proposals for reform which would collectively ensure that compensation is delivered in a greater number of cases.