Abstract

The 2002 Mauritian Prevention of Corruption Act [fn1] (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. footnote 1: Prevention of Corruption Act 5 of 2002, proclaimed by Proc 18 of 2002 wef 1 April 2002.