The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) audits its member countries under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, issuing recommendations for the faults OECD reviewers discover. Often, these faults consist of legal or political shortcomings in the enforcement of foreign bribery, but rarely legitimate concerns for the physical safety and well-being of parties involved in the foreign bribery prosecution process. Colombia, however, received a particular note in this troubling regard from the OECD in its Phase 3 audit report in 2019 and follow-up in 2021.
Colombia’s foreign bribery detection, enforcement, and prosecution, while not the most egregious among OECD member countries, was discovered to be severely lacking by the reviewers. However, the chief concern among the reviewers was not the legal framework in Colombia, but rather the deaths of whistleblowers. “The lead examiners are seriously concerned about the absence of whistleblower protection and the circumstances faced by whistleblowers in Colombia,” the reviewers wrote. “Since Phase 2, media reports about the sudden deaths of a whistleblower who reported allegations of corruption related to the Odebrecht scandal and his son, as well as the suicide of a witness who was about to testify in an Odebrech- related investigation, suggest that the situation for whistleblowers and those who report corruption in Colombia is perceived as hostile.”
According to the report, three...
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