FRANCE Law and Practice Contributed by: Thierry Marembert, Cécile Labarbe, Aaron Bass and Céline Serpagli, Kiejman & Marembert
KIEJMAN & MAREMBERT 260 boulevard Saint-Germain 75007 Paris France Tel: +33 1 45 55 09 00 Fax: +33 1 45 55 29 88 Email: contact@kiejman-marembert.com Web: www.kiejman-marembert.com
1. Legal Framework 1.1 International Conventions France is a signatory to several international conven - tions on bribery and corruption, including: • the Convention drawn up on the basis of Arti - cle K.3 of the Treaty on European Union, on the protection of the European Communities’ financial interests dated 26 July 1995, ratified by France on 4 August 2000; • the Convention drawn up on the basis of Article K.3 (2) (c) of the Treaty on European Union on the fight against corruption involving officials of the European Communities or officials of Member States of the European Union dated 26 May 1997; • the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions dated 21 November 1997 (ratified on 29 September 2000); • the Council of Europe’s Criminal and Civil Law Conventions on Corruption (both ratified on 25 April 2008 with an entry into force on 1 August 2008); • the United Nations Convention Against Transna - tional Organized Crime, also called the “Palermo Convention” (ratified on 29 October 2002); and • the United Nations Convention against Corruption, also called the “Merida Convention” (signed in New York on 31 October 2003 and ratified on 11 July 2005). 1.2 National Legislation France’s main anti-corruption legislation can be found in the French Criminal Code (FCC), where all relevant
offences are laid down over different sections depend - ing, primarily, on the identity of the bribe-taker (French official, foreign official, judge, etc). Related offences such as book-keeping fraud can be found in other codes, such as the Commercial Code or the General Tax Code. The “Sapin II” Law of 9 December 2016 is France’s main legislation with respect to anti-corruption com - pliance. It has brought major changes to transparency and anti-corruption compliance. These include the fol - lowing legal requirements and dedicated innovations to prevent and prosecute corruption, while promoting greater transparency in both public and private sec - tors: • new compliance obligations for large companies which have more than 500 employees and a turno - ver exceeding EUR100 million, such as the imple - mentation of corruption prevention programmes, risk mapping, employee training, etc; • a protective status for whistle-blowers; • the strengthening of anti-corruption enforcement with the creation of the crime of influence-peddling to obtain a favourable decision from a foreign official; • the creation of the French Anti-Corruption Agency ( Agence française anticorruption or AFA), an inde - pendent agency tasked with monitoring the imple - mentation of the above-mentioned compliance obligations; and • the creation of the French Deferred Prosecution Agreement ( Convention Judiciaire d’Intérêt Public or CJIP).
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