ECONOMY Corruption: Government waives the “plea bargain” – Le Dauphiné Libéré

The Government shall waive the device of “plea bargaining” in its draft law on transparency of economic life, the State Council has retoqué this proposal, announced Sunday the finance minister Michel Sapin in the JDD .

the draft law on transparency of economic life, also called Tree II bill, aims to fight against corruption and must be presented Wednesday in Council of Ministers. One of its flagship measures is a device called “public interest netting agreement” (CCIP) or “plea bargain.”

The government followed the advice of the State Council

It should enable undertakings implicated in corruption cases to avoid a criminal conviction by paying a fine – which would be capped at 30% of their average turnover for the three recent years, the model of “deferred prosecution agreement” (or DPA) US.

“the Council of State noted the many questions raised by this innovation while emphasizing its effectiveness in the fight against foreign bribery. We’ll see if parliamentarians want to take the subject, “said Michel Sapin in the Journal du Dimanche. “In these circumstances, the Government, on the advice of the State Council, will submit to Parliament a text that does not contain this device,” he announced.

Organizations were mounted slot

Thursday, a group of organizations – 14 organizations including NGOs such as Oxfam France and Solidaires unions such Public Finance or the Union of Magistrates – had called for the removal of the proposed device.

These organizations felt that the plea agreement was “a step towards a disempowerment of legal persons for acts of corruption and impunity in fact, against the current international and national initiatives.”

The French justice, in fact, uttered no conviction for bribery of foreign public officials in the past fifteen years. At the same time, hundreds of measures were taken in the US and nearly 50 in Germany.

Several French groups have had to pay fines to the US Justice, the Image of Total, Alcatel-Lucent or Alstom, which agreed to pay $ 772 million fine for alleged late December of bribes.