In the same week that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development criticized France for not doing enough to combat bribery, the OECD Working Group on Bribery in another report also criticized Australia for not doing enough to combat foreign bribery involving Australian companies.

The OECD says it has “serious concerns” that Australia's enforcement of its foreign bribery laws has been “extremely low.” Out of 28 foreign bribery referrals received by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in 13 years, 21 concluded without charges.

Only one case has led to prosecutions. In July 2011, eight former executives and sales agents of Securency and Note Printing Australia (NPA)—two subsidiaries of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)—were charged with foreign bribery. Another former executive also pleaded guilty to false accounting.

According to the allegations, RBA and NPA bribed foreign public officials in Vietnam, Indonesia, Nepal and Malaysia between 1999 and 2005 to secure contracts to produce bank notes. The case, which is ongoing, possibly extends to bribery charges in several more countries.

In its report, the OECD made a list of recommendations to improve Australia's fight against foreign bribery, including:

Take sufficient steps to ensure that cases are not prematurely closed, and be more proactive in gathering information from diverse sources at the pre-investigative stage;

Gather foreign bribery allegations proactively and from diverse sources;

Ensure that corporations cannot avoid criminal liability in practice;

Improve coordination and case referral with clear, written arrangements between the AFT and Commonwealth and State authorities;

Tap into the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's expertise in investigating corporate crime to prevent, detect and investigate foreign bribery where appropriate; and

Vigorously pursue false accounting cases.

The report identifies additional areas for improvement, such as increasing maximum sanctions against legal persons for false accounting, raising more awareness about the difference between a bribe and a facilitation payment, and strengthening whistleblower protections in the public and private sectors. In addition, the OECD recommends that corporate liability provisions “be applied where appropriate and coupled with ongoing training.”

The report also highlighted positive aspects of Australia's efforts to fight foreign bribery, one of which includes the intended adoption in December 2012 of the country's first national anti-corruption plan. In addition, Australia established a Foreign Bribery Panel of Experts to advise AFP investigation teams.

In other positive developments, Australia in February 2012 issued amended guidance to clarify that the facilitation payment defense is restricted to payments of a minor value, and to eliminate certain examples that had caused concerns. Australia also substantially increased the maximum fine against companies for foreign bribery in 2010.

The working group—made made up of the 34 OECD member countries plus Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Russia and South Africa—adopted Australia's report in its third phase of monitoring implementation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.

Similar to the report issued on France, the OECD report on Australia includes an overview of recent enforcement actions and specific legal, policy and institutional features of the Australia's framework for fighting foreign bribery.

Australia will submit a written report to the working group within two years on steps it has taken to implement the new recommendations.