Seeking relief from long, long arm of US law
SA's Corruption Watch hopes to scare firms straight with Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
The risks for companies involved in corruption in South Africa are "pretty nonexistent", says David Lewis, who heads the civil society anticorruption body Corruption Watch. The body is trying to take management consultancy McKinsey to court in the US. In South Africa, legislation is little or no deterrent. Many company directors don't even know what the local anticorruption law is called, he says. "South African nonexecutive directors of companies exposed to US legislation can give you a pretty good account of what's in the [US] Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but they can't even tell you what the name is of the South African legislation. "That's a measure of the risk that they think they face here." Often the only chance of holding them to account for criminal actions in South Africa is to use the legal system of another country. This is why Corruption Watch has gone to the US to press criminal charges against McKinsey for the role of its South African subsidiary in a R1.6-billion d...
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