The OECD, the Council of Europe and the UN Conventions do not define
“corruption”. Instead they establish the offences for a range of corrupt
behaviour. Hence, the OECD Convention establishes the offence of bribery of
foreign public officials, while the Council of Europe Convention establishes
offences such as trading in influence, and bribing domestic and foreign public
officials. In addition to these types of conduct, the mandatory provisions of
the UN Convention also include embezzlement, misappropriation or other
diversion of property by a public official and obstruction of justice. The
conventions therefore define international standards on the criminalisation of
corruption by prescribing specific offences, rather than through a generic
definition or offence of corruption.
Some Istanbul Action Plan countries take a different approach by defining
corruption as a specific crime in their anti-corruption and criminal laws. In
practice, these definitions of corruption are often too general or vague from a
criminal law perspective. As a result, there have been very few prosecutions or
convictions for these offences.