ANNAPOLIS, Md., March 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ --  TRACE, a non-profit international business association dedicated to anti-bribery, compliance and good governance, today published the 2022 Global Enforcement Report, noting that despite a slight uptick in enforcement activity by U.S. agencies, the overall pace of anti-bribery enforcement actions and investigations continued to lag worldwide. The report, TRACE's 13th annual edition, provides data from 2022 and summarizes 46 years of anti-bribery activity.

The slight increase in the number of foreign bribery enforcement actions brought by the United States in 2022, the report found, did not substantially offset the downward trend that began in 2018. Enforcement actions around the world, excluding the United States, continued to decline. Globally, according to available information, there was a drop in the number of open foreign bribery investigations.

“The Global Enforcement Report provides multinational companies with important risk information they use to make investment decisions in the markets where they operate,” TRACE President Alexandra Wrage said. “It also provides a starting point for accountability: assessing how strong a given country is on anti-bribery enforcement, and determining which governments are trending in the wrong direction.”

The Global Enforcement Report also examines industry and regional trends. The extractives and construction sectors remained the most heavily investigated and prosecuted by non-U.S. enforcement agencies in 2022. U.S. enforcement agencies stand out for maintaining a large number of investigations in the financial sector, almost on par with the number of investigations into the extractives sector.

‍