Gifts & hospitality

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Almost every business engages in some form of hospitality with existing or potential business partners or clients.

While the provision of gifts and hospitality is not of itself a problem, it can be used as a bribe in contravention of the Bribery Act 2010 (BA 2010), so you need to ensure your organisation has procedures in place to ensure any gifts and hospitality are proper and legitimate. BA 2010 itself does not provide any direct exemptions or assistance on what is acceptable and what is not. Knowing what you can and cannot properly do can therefore be difficult.

BA 2010 includes a corporate offence of failure to prevent bribery. It is a defence for an organisation if it had adequate procedures in place to prevent persons associated with it from bribing.

Practice Notes: Anti-bribery and corruption—gifts and hospitality and Key risk areas—bribery and corruption provide guidance on the bribery risks associated with gifts and hospitality under

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