Jennifer Quaid, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
A jury is about to decide the fate of a senior SNC-Lavalin executive accused of corruption and fraud. Meanwhile, Canada’s remediation agreement process is still sorely lacking.
Legally, a person can obstruct justice even if he committed no other crime – though it is harder to prove. It all depends on the intent behind pressuring investigators, say, or firing an FBI director.
Promoting Canadian jobs is part of any government’s political mandate, but so too is the responsibility of ensuring that Canadian businesses are not supporting or condoning corruption abroad.
Sir John A. Macdonald fused the jobs of justice minister and attorney general as Canada’s first prime minister. So is he partly to blame for the SNC-Lavalin controversy?
Until recently, paying a bribe or kickback to secure a contract abroad was seen as the cost of doing business in a foreign land. The SNC-Lavalin case has underscored the need to rethink the approach.
The rankings in Transparency International’s 2018 index shows that highly democratic countries tend to have low levels of corruption. Is there something inherent in corruption that can kill democracy?
A legal scholar looks at the new and narrowed definition of bribery by the US Supreme Court. In the future, will politicians doing favors for donors and friends ever be prosecuted for corruption?
Public sector corruption is a major challenge to doing business in Africa and players are mostly ill-equipped to deal with it. Business schools can teach the skills to tackle it.
Two cases remind us of the international presence of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the importance of designing, adopting and enforcing effective anti-corruption policies.