Professor Celia Wells is an invited speaker at the 9th Annual Anti-Corruption Conference jointly organised by the International Bar Association and the OECD, to be held at the OECD Conference Centre, Paris, France on  23–24 June 2011. Professor Wells will be talking about the UK Bribery Act 2010, coming in to force in July this year, which makes commercial organisations liable if their employees or agents engage in bribery, as part of a panel on corporate liability for corruption offences. The panel, chaired by Professor Mark Pieth, has speakers from the US Department of Justice, Italian Ministry of Justice and Compliance Counsel for Siemens.

The liability of legal persons for bribery of foreign public officials is a relatively new concept in many legal systems. The panel will provide an opportunity for regulators, prosecutors and academics from various civil and common law jurisdictions to outline the various legislative models for corporate liability, and the different approaches to investigating and prosecuting corporations. The session will discuss case studies of instances where companies have been successfully prosecuted and sanctioned, and the question of the interplay between corporate and individual prosecutions.