Punishing foreign and local companies (corporations) for bribery in Mauritius: The need to amend the Prevention of Corruption Act

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Date: 16 August 2019
• Published date: 16 August 2019
• Pages: 42-53
• Author: Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi

42

PUNISHING FOREIGN AND LOCAL

COMPANIES (CORPORATIONS)

FOR BRIBERY IN MAURITIUS: THE

NEED TO AMEND THE PREVENTION

OF CORRUPTION ACT

JAMIL DDAMULIRA MUJUZI*

Associate Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of the

Western Cape

ABSTRACT

The 2002 Mauritian Prevention of Corruption Act1 (POCA or the

Act) provides for different offences. Section 5 of POCA provides for

the offence of bribery and states that ‘any person guilty shall be

liable to penal servitude’. This means that POCA does not provide

an appropriate sentence for juristic persons because juristic persons

cannot be sentenced to imprisonment or penal servitude. This

is what one of the courts in Mauritius found when it convicted

two foreign companies of bribery but could not sentence them to

prison. In this article the author argues that Mauritian legislators

should amend POCA to provide for sentences that may be imposed

on companies convicted of offences under the Act. The author

also argues that, in addition to prosecution, Mauritius may find

it useful to adopt the deferred prosecution agreements approach

as one of the ways to ensure that companies are deterred from

committing corruption and also to ensure that they put effective

measures in place to combat corruption.

* The author wrote this paper while he was a visiting academic at the Centre for

Criminology, University of Oxford, from 30 May 2015 to 29 June 2015. He is

grateful to Prof Mary Bosworth of the Centre for Criminology, University of

Oxford, for hosting him, and to the University of Oxford which awarded him

a grant from the Oppenheimer Fund to cater for some of the expenses for the

research visit. This paper is also based on the research supported partly by the

National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant specific unique reference

number (UID) 86004) .The author acknowledges that opinions, findings and

conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author

and that the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard. Email: djmujuzi@

gmail.com.

1 Prevention of Corruption Act 5 of 2002, proclaimed by Proc 18 of 2002 wef

1 April 2002.

(2015) 1(2) JCCL&P 42

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