TRACE Publishes 14th Annual Global Enforcement Report on Anti-Bribery

19 March 2024 – Annapolis, Md. – TRACE, a non-profit international business association dedicated to anti-bribery, compliance, and good governance, today published the 2023 Global Enforcement Report (GER), which serves as a central source of anti-bribery enforcement data for compliance professionals. The report, TRACE’s 14^th annual edition, summarizes 47 years of enforcement activity, in addition to providing an analysis of current data and trends.

According to the 2023 GER, there was a drop in the number of open bribery investigations being conducted worldwide, but a moderate increase in U.S. enforcement activity over the previous year. This trend is consistent with those observed in the 2022 GER.

Of the 87 countries conducting investigations concerning alleged bribery of domestic officials, Brazil was conducting the most, followed by India, Nigeria, and China.

The Extractive and Engineering/Construction industries continue to experience the highest number of non-U.S. enforcement actions. However, compared to 2022, Financial Services surpassed Extractive Industries in terms of open U.S. investigations concerning bribery of domestic and foreign officials.

“Globally, we continue to see an overall downward trend in foreign bribery enforcement which began in 2018. However, U.S. cooperation with foreign governments and enforcement agencies remains strong with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission relying on these relationships to undertake these investigations,” said Alexandra Wrage, President of TRACE. Wrage added: “enforcement is often uneven from year to year but, in U.S. election years, we tend to see a number of open cases wrapped up and would expect to see that later this year, too.”

Data from the GER is based primarily on the cases and investigations tracked in the TRACE Compendium, an online database of transnational corruption cases.

Read the report at www.TRACEinternational.org.

About TRACE

TRACE is a non-profit international business association dedicated to anti-bribery, compliance and good governance. Founded in 2001 to make it easier and less expensive to navigate and mitigate business bribery risk, TRACE is credited with establishing anti-bribery standards that have been adopted worldwide. Driven by the needs of its members, TRACE is continuously developing tools and resources that power compliance programs. TRACE is headquartered in the United States and registered in Canada, with a presence on four continents. For more information, visit www.TRACEinternational.org.