White-collar crime specialists have criticised a proposal to prevent people implicated in foreign bribery cases from securing help with legal fees from their employers as part of any corporate settlement.

The proposal was included in a letter sent to the OECD by NGOs on the eve of last month’s Anti-Bribery Ministerial Meeting in Paris. The letter called for the OECD to develop a set of ‘global standards for corporate settlements based on best practice’.

Lloyd Firth, litigator at WilmerHale’s UK Investigations and Criminal Litigation team, described the proposal as ‘unethical and unworkable’, warning that it could ‘severely hamper access to justice’.