BERLIN —A new study that shows laws forbidding companies from paying bribes to win or influence foreign contracts have resulted in a rising number of prosecutions, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said Thursday.
The Berlin-based agency said that, of 37 countries that have signed on to the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention, Germany and the United States have been most aggressively pursuing investigations and prosecutions.
The convention, which went into effect in 1999, commits countries to making foreign bribery a crime. The 37 countries that were part of the study had prosecuted 708 cases in total by the end of 2011, compared with 564 by the end of 2010, and have 286 ongoing cases, the study showed.
More than 250 individuals and about 100 companies were sanctioned for foreign bribery cases to the end of 2011.
