Organisations worldwide now recognise the need to change previously accepted practices concerning the corruption of foreign public officials. This sea of change as a reaction to the growing belief that corruption, far from stimulating international commerce, frustrates local economies and distorts competition. Hitherto there was a shoulder-shrugging attitude of resignation that corruption was endemic in many parts of the world and nothing could be done to alter it. This was certainly the position when, at the end of the 1980s, the OECD embarked on an initiative to try to win the support of the major industrial/commercial nations in creating an international instrument to stamp out this particular conduct.
