NORWAY Law and Practice Contributed by: Elisabeth Roscher, Geir Sviggum, Tine Vigmostad and Kristin Nordland Brattli, Wikborg Rein Advokatfirma AS
8. Compliance Expectations 8.1 Compliance Obligations
the Court of Appeal reduced the sentence to five months of imprisonment for simple corruption in September 2023 (decision LB-2023-27135). The Court of Appeal found that the pay - ment received by the engineer constituted an “improper advantage”. While an amount ranging from NOK40,000 to NOK50,000 over a two-year period may not be substantial, it surpasses the threshold for the application of the corruption provisions. The Court of Appeal considered that even though most of the documents provided to the Russian intelligence officer were neither confidential nor sensitive, the action still consti - tuted corruption because they were internal doc - uments that the engineer had access to by virtue of his position. However, the Court of Appeal did not conclude that providing such documents in exchange for such an advantage constituted aggravated corruption. 7.6 Level of Sanctions Imposed Fines imposed on individuals for violations of the Anti-corruption Provisions have been in the range of NOK6,000 to NOK 450,000 (statistics from Transparency International Norway for 2003–2021). The longest prison sentence in a corruption case is the maximum sentence of 21 years in a case against a former policeman (the Jensen case). Note, however, that the sentence also included other serious charges (ie, not just corruption charges). In respect of corporate criminal liability, the high - est penalty imposed on a company for violation of the Anti-corruption Provisions is the NOK270 million fine imposed on Yara International ASA in 2017. In addition to the fine, an amount of NOK25 million was confiscated.
There are no regulations in the national legisla - tion which impose obligations concerning com - pliance programmes specifically aimed at anti- corruption and failure to prevent violations of the Anti-corruption Provisions is not an offence. However, some sector-specific regulations do impose a duty to organise and run the busi - ness in a prudent manner (see, eg, the Finan - cial Institution Act Section 13.5). Such obliga - tions include the duty to implement appropriate policies and procedures in order to identify and manage the relevant risk. Furthermore, as outlined above (see 3.3 Cor- porate Liability ), when deciding on corporate liability pursuant to Section 27 of the Penal Code, it is relevant whether the company could have prevented the offence by use of guidelines, instruction, training, checks or other measures (cf. Section 28 of the Penal Code). 8.2 Compliance Guidelines and Best Practices ØKOKRIM provides a general introduction to anti-corruption, as well as issuing articles on relevant topics on their website. Except for this, Norwegian enforcement bodies do not currently provide official guidelines regarding expecta - tions and/or best practices for compliance pro - grammes. However, it is expected that ØKOKRIM’s ongo - ing work to develop guidelines for imposing corporate penalties in international corruption cases will include some guidelines regarding expectations and/or best practices for com - pliance programmes (see 4.5 Safe Harbour or Amnesty Programme , 6.2 Voluntary Disclosure
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