Prague/Paris, June 22 (CTK) – Some of the recommendations the OECD has made for the Czech Republic to fight the bribery of foreign officials effectively are no surprise and Prague plans the respective steps on its own, the Justice Ministry and the Supreme State Attorney’s Office (NSZ) said in reaction to the OECD today.
In today’s report on Czech fulfilment of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) wrote that Prague has to intensify its effort in uncovering, investigating and prosecuting this kind of bribery.
Prague has to take significant steps to boost the passing and enforcement of the relevant laws, the OECD said, but added that Prague has shown determination to improve the situation.
The NSZ and the Justice Ministry have called the report “a positive assessment by the OECD.”
The report writes that the Czech Republic has ratified the OECD convention as early as 17 years ago, but no case of a foreign public official’s bribery has ever been prosecuted in the country.
This raises concern, mainly with regard to the Czech economy’s orientation at export, including risky branches such as engineering and the armament trade, the OECD wrote.
Nevertheless, it appreciated Prague’s considerable effort to improve its system of fighting against the bribery of foreign officials and the introduction of methods such as the applications for foreign legal assistance to help inquire into suspected cases, the use of non-financial kind of evidence, and the launch of central registries of banking accounts and of real owners of corporations.
The NSZ and the Justice Ministry wrote that the Czech Republic is preparing some of the OECD-proposed solutions independently from the OECD report.
For example, the proposed higher independence of the state attorneys’ system is a demand to be met by the newly drafted bill on state attorneys, they wrote.
They said they have been intensively working on new rules of criminal liability of legal entities.
The protection of those reporting bribery has been included in a bill enhancing whistleblowers’ position within criminal proceedings, they wrote.
rtj/mr/hol
