24/03/2023 – On the proposal of the OECD Working Group on Bribery, the OECD Council agreed to invite Mauritius and Ukraine to become Participants in the Working Group with a view to facilitating their accession to the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

As Participants in the Working Group, representatives from Mauritius and Ukraine will be able to attend all non-confidential meetings of the Working Group. Witnessing the discussions of the Working Group members and engaging in a dialogue on their own efforts to fight corruption and foreign bribery will prepare them to seek accession to the Convention and Working Group membership in the future. Accession to the Convention is subject to a further assessment by the Working Group.

Participants may also benefit from obtaining knowledge or receiving technical assistance and the Working Group welcomes their contributions to discussions and to the Working Group’s mandate and programme of work.

Once a country has acceded to the Convention, it becomes a member of the Working Group. Made up of representatives from the States Parties to the Convention, the Working Group meets four times per year in Paris and publishes all of its country monitoring reports online. This peer-review monitoring system is considered by Transparency International to be the ‘gold standard’ of monitoring.

For further information, journalists are invited to contact Elodie Beth, Senior Global Relations Manager of the OECD Anti-Corruption Division, telephone +33 1 45 24 78 40.

For more information on OECD’s work to fight corruption and foreign bribery, please visit https://www.oecd.org/corruption/anti-bribery/.

Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to preserve individual liberty and improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.