Anti-Bribery for Sales · Module 2 of 2

Tender

A £2.8M bid. Five days from submission, your bid manager wants to send rugby tickets to the prospect's procurement lead.

Portrait of Sam Holt, Senior Account Director at Meridian Engineering
Your Role

Sam Holt

Senior Account Director, Meridian Engineering

Module 1 was Haldane. You were on the receiving end. Now you're running point on a new bid. £2.8M of pressure-testing kit for the Linsel Group's North Sea programme. Submission Friday next week. You have not won this account before. Today, your own bid team wants to send hospitality the other way.

The bid. Three suppliers shortlisted by Linsel: Meridian, Calthorpe Industrial, and Nordic Precision AS. Submission deadline next Friday. Award decision the Monday after.

Meridian's giving-side rule. Any hospitality offered to a prospect during a live tender must be pre-cleared by Naomi. The threshold is the same £250 you saw in Module 1, applied in the giving direction.

The cast. Joe Harding runs your bid. Naomi Aldridge is still compliance. Iona Whitfield is still CFO. Diana Pomeroy is Procurement Director at Linsel and the person scoring your bid. Aaron Whitlock is the BD analyst Joe assigned to the bid, eight months in, attended your onboarding.

Before You Start

How This Works

A branching scenario. The choices you make shape whether the bid lands cleanly, whether it lands at all, and where you sit on the right side of s.1.

+3 The move that protects the bid AND keeps Meridian off the regulator's file.
+1 Defensible but partial. You'll see what got missed.
−2 Looks like sales hustle. Reads as inducement to a prosecutor.

Tip: Highlighted text like Section 1 is clickable. Tap to read the underlying law in full.

Portrait of Joe Harding, Bid Manager
Monday, 5:55 PM · bid room, Meridian HQ
Narrator

Bid wash-up. Joe is in front of the whiteboard. Pricing is locked. The technical narrative is still the only piece anyone is awake for.

Joe Harding

Sam, before you go. One thought. Diana Pomeroy at Linsel. We've never won an account with her, never lost one either. The only thing she's said to me on a call is "I look forward to seeing the proposal".

Joe Harding

Calthorpe took her to Twickenham in March. I know because their account director told me at a conference, smug as anything. Two seats, England v Wales, hosted box. Diana was there. I've got two tickets going for the autumn international next Saturday. England v South Africa. They're sitting in my drawer.

Sam Holt

Submission is Friday week. The award is the Monday after that.

Joe Harding

I know. That's why I want to send them now. Not after the bid. Now. Get our face in front of her before the proposal lands. Calthorpe did it, they're going to do it again. If we don't match, our paper has to do all the lifting and Diana doesn't know us.

Two tickets, England v South Africa, Twickenham, hosted box~£480
Hospitality (food, drinks)~£140
Estimated total per recipient£620
Joe Harding

I'll log it the moment we send. Let me get this moving tonight.

Portrait of Sam Holt
⚖ Decision Point 1 of 3

Joe is twenty-two years in. He has won deals you have not. The Calthorpe story is plausible, you know it happens. The tickets cost £620 a head. Submission is ten days away. You are the senior on the bid, which means whatever Joe sends out goes out under your name as well as his. Joe is waiting for you to say yes. He has not asked Naomi.

What do you say back to Joe?

Your choice

Stop the tickets. Propose a working lunch instead, through Naomi.

Tell Joe the tickets don't go. £620 a head, ten days from submission, to the buyer scoring the bid, hits both Section 1 indicators (value plus timing) before anyone has read a word of the proposal. Counter-propose a working lunch in Diana's diary, sub-£100 a head, agenda shared in advance, pre-cleared by Naomi this week. The face-time happens, the inducement reading doesn't.

Your choice

Tell Joe to hold. Take it to Naomi first thing tomorrow.

Don't say no, don't say yes. Don't send anything tonight. Walk into Naomi's office Tuesday morning with the offer on a sheet of paper and ask her to pre-clear or refuse. Defensible. But it leaves Joe with the expectation it's still on, and you've punted the call rather than made it.

Your choice

Send the tickets tonight. Log them in the register after the bid lands.

Joe knows this market. Calthorpe is going to send tickets. The Bribery Act doesn't prohibit reasonable hospitality. Get them out the door tonight, log them in the register once the proposal is in, brief Naomi after the award. The only question is whether you match the competition or not.

Portrait of Joe Harding
Monday, 6:08 PM · bid room +3
Sam Holt

Joe, the tickets don't go. Not this side of the award. £620 a head into Diana's diary ten days from submission is the textbook s.1 problem. I'm not running it past Naomi to get a yes. I'm telling you now because the answer is no.

Joe Harding

Calthorpe will. We lose this on a coin flip and the coin flip is whose face she remembers.

Sam Holt

Then we get her face-time differently. Working lunch this week, sub-£100 a head, agenda shared in advance, three of our engineers walking her through the test rig. I'll mail Naomi tonight, she'll have it cleared by tomorrow lunchtime.

Joe Harding

A working lunch.

Sam Holt

Diana's a procurement director on a £2.8M decision. She wants the technical case, not a hosted box. Calthorpe sending tickets isn't a strategy. It's a habit.

Narrator

Joe doesn't agree. But he doesn't push. The tickets stay in the drawer. You email Naomi at 7:14 PM with the lunch outline. Pre-clear lands at 11:02 the next morning.

Why This Held Up

The Section 1 test asks whether the advantage was given intending to induce improper performance. Stopping the tickets before they leave the office removes the offer entirely. The SFO hospitality guidance names value and timing as the two flags. Counter-proposing a sub-£100 working lunch with an agenda shared in advance reframes the activity as legitimate technical engagement. MoJ Principle 1 is satisfied because the response is proportionate to the bid value (£2.8M) and the timing (ten days from submission). And the pre-clear lands in writing before the spend, which is what the procedure exists to do.

Portrait of Naomi Aldridge
Tuesday, 8:35 AM · Naomi's office +1
Sam Holt

Joe wants to send these to Diana Pomeroy at Linsel. £620 a head. Submission is Friday week. I told him to hold. Nothing's gone out.

Naomi Aldridge

Refused. Easy call. Twice the personal threshold, into the buyer's diary, ten days from a £2.8M award. There's no version of this that pre-clears.

Sam Holt

I figured. I wanted it on paper from you, not from me.

Naomi Aldridge

Fine. But Sam, you knew the answer last night. You could have told Joe last night. He's spent fifteen hours assuming this might still go.

The Gap That Cost You The Top Mark

Holding the offer overnight and getting Naomi to write the refusal is defensible. The tickets didn't go, the pre-clear is on the file. But under MoJ Principle 5, the salesperson closest to the deal is the one the procedure expects to recognise the s.1 indicators on the spot. By punting to Naomi, you signalled to Joe that the call was a procedural question rather than an obvious no, which makes the next ask harder to refuse, not easier. The SFO hospitality guidance point is the same: value plus timing equals inducement risk, regardless of whether either side intended it.

Portrait of Joe Harding
Monday, 7:42 PM −2
Sam Holt

Send them. Courier, gift card, "looking forward to the proposal next week, hope you can use these". Log it tomorrow morning, brief Naomi after the bid lands.

Joe Harding

Right call. I'll have them with her by lunchtime tomorrow.

Narrator

The tickets go out by courier Tuesday morning. The note on the gift card mentions the proposal twice. Diana Pomeroy's PA opens the package at 11:08, takes a photograph of the gift card, and forwards the photograph to her boss along with a one-line email: "Submission Friday week. Tickets received today. Logging on the buyer-side hospitality register and flagging to internal audit. Recommend declining."

The "Everyone Does It" Trap, Mirrored

Section 1 makes it an offence to give a financial or other advantage intending to induce improper performance. The advantage doesn't need to be cash and the intent doesn't need to be stated. The SFO hospitality guidance names value and timing as the two strongest indicators, and £620 ten days before a £2.8M award hits both. Logging the gift after it's been sent does the opposite of what a register is for: it documents the offence rather than preventing it. Meridian's Section 7 defence is now harder to run, because the senior salesperson approved hospitality the policy specifically exists to stop.

Wednesday, 2:18 PM · bid room
Narrator

Aaron Whitlock catches you by the bid-room kettle. Eight months at Meridian. He sat through the same anti-bribery onboarding you sat through twelve years ago.

Aaron Whitlock

Sam, can I check something. Joe asked me yesterday to quietly find out Diana Pomeroy's home address. He didn't say why. I haven't done it. I'm assuming the rugby thing is still alive in his head, even after Monday.

Aaron Whitlock

Also. I asked Naomi for a quick read on what we can and can't do, and she said the only person on this bid who's pre-cleared anything is you. Joe hasn't filed a single hospitality entry in eighteen months. I don't know if that's normal.

Narrator

It's not normal. It means whatever Joe sent on previous bids, he sent without ledger trail. Before you take that anywhere, you owe yourself one careful look at this bid file.

Wednesday, 2:40 PM · your laptop

The Linsel bid file, on one page.

You open the bid tracker and the giving-side hospitality register side by side.

DetailValue
ProspectLinsel Group · UK industrial water & energy infrastructure
Bid value£2.8M · pressure-testing equipment, North Sea programme
Buyer scoring the bidDiana Pomeroy, Procurement Director, Linsel Group
Submission deadlineFriday next week · 10 calendar days
Award decisionMonday after submission
Hospitality offered to date by Meridian (this bid)None recorded
Hospitality offered by Joe Harding, last 18 months (any client)Zero entries on the giving-side register
Joe's proposed offer (Monday)2 tickets · ~£620 to Diana Pomeroy
Today's request to AaronDiana Pomeroy's home address, no stated reason
Pre-clear threshold (live tender)£250

Either Joe is genuinely catching the rugby idea for the first time, in which case the eighteen-month register gap is hygiene. Or Joe sends gifts on bids and doesn't log them, in which case the rugby idea is a pattern, and the home-address request changes what kind of pattern.

Naomi has just emailed: "Sam, free at 4? Aaron flagged something. Want to walk through what I have on Joe's giving history before you decide what to do."

Activity · Score Joe's Gift Against The Indicators

Three SFO indicators sit across the top. Five facts about Joe's offer sit down the side. Click the indicator column under which the offer fails most clearly. One column is the load-bearing one a prosecutor would lead with.

Fact about the offer Timing & proximity to decision Value Recipient role
10 calendar days from submission High — —
Award decision the Monday after High — —
~£620 per recipient (2.5x policy threshold) — Mid —
Recipient is the buyer scoring the bid — — High
No prior relationship between Joe and Diana Mid — Mid
Portrait of Iona Whitfield, CFO
⚖ Decision Point 2 of 3

Iona walks into the bid room before the 4pm slot with Naomi. "Sam, Joe just told me you killed the rugby thing. Linsel is a £2.8M bid we don't currently win. We have one shot to stand out, and you've ruled out the move our competitor will definitely make. I'm not asking you to send the tickets. I'm asking what we do instead, and whether 'a working lunch with engineers' is what closes a procurement director who's never met us."

How do you respond?

Your choice

Hold the line on hospitality. Compete on the bid.

The working lunch is the bridge. The proposal is the close. Lead with a tighter technical narrative and a half-day site visit at the test rig the week after submission, on the books, agenda shared. If Calthorpe wins because they sent rugby tickets, that tells us something about Diana's procurement. Get Naomi to write a short note for the file confirming the rugby idea was raised, considered, and refused, so the answer is on the record next time it comes up.

Your choice

Restage as a sponsored industry roundtable.

Sponsor a small North Sea pressure-testing roundtable next month. Ten attendees, all three shortlisted suppliers' clients invited, agenda set jointly with an industry body. Diana gets a seat and so do four of her peers. Pre-clear with Naomi, sub-£200 a head, no individual gift to Diana. Defensible. The line between "industry event" and "hospitality marketing aimed at the buyer" thins out fast under scrutiny.

Your choice

Find a smaller gesture that stays under the threshold.

Iona has a point. Drop the rugby. Send Diana a £200 single ticket to a technical conference next week, a copy of an industry book, a hand-written note from Joe. Under the £250 threshold. Log it on the way out. Looks proportionate on the register. Reads to Diana exactly the way the £620 ticket reads, just smaller.

Portrait of Iona Whitfield, CFO
Wednesday, 4:05 PM · Iona's office +3
Sam Holt

No tickets, no roundtable, no gift card. The proposal closes the bid. I'll lead a tighter technical narrative and offer Diana a half-day site visit at the test rig the week after submission, on the books. Naomi writes the file note today: rugby idea raised, considered, refused, with reasons.

Iona Whitfield

If we lose this and Calthorpe took her to the rugby, you understand what I'll be hearing in the post-mortem.

Sam Holt

If we lose Linsel because Diana scored a hosted box higher than a £2.8M technical proposal, that's a procurement we never held in the first place. The cost of finding out is ten days. The cost of not finding out is on a register the SFO can subpoena.

Iona Whitfield

Naomi, file the note. Sam, send me the technical narrative draft tonight.

Why This Held Up

Holding the line under commercial pressure is the load-bearing test of MoJ Principle 5: staff have to believe the procedures are real, and the only way they believe it is when senior people apply them in front of senior money. Naomi's file note creates exactly the documented decision Section 7 expects: a near-miss that the company recognised, addressed, and recorded. The site visit is the legitimate, on-the-books form of buyer engagement that the SFO hospitality guidance contemplates: tied to the technical case, agenda shared in advance, no asymmetric advantage to one bidder.

Portrait of Naomi Aldridge
Thursday, 10:15 AM · Naomi's office +1
Sam Holt

Sponsored North Sea pressure-testing roundtable, four weeks out. Ten attendees, all three shortlisted suppliers' clients invited, agenda set with the BPMA. Sub-£200 a head. No individual gift to Diana, Diana sits next to four of her peers.

Naomi Aldridge

I can pre-clear it. Two conditions. The agenda has to be technical and visible to all three shortlisted bidders before the bid closes. And the invite list cannot be tilted toward Linsel.

Sam Holt

Done.

Naomi Aldridge

One more thing. If the SFO ever reads the invite list and sees that you sent it the week before bid submission, the question they'll ask is whether the event existed before the bid did. Make sure the BPMA's emails to you predate the bid window.

Where The Compromise Holds, And Where It Doesn't

MoJ Principle 1 requires procedures proportionate to the risk. A genuine industry event, with an external organising body, an agenda visible to all bidders, and no asymmetric advantage to Diana, sits inside the lane the SFO hospitality guidance contemplates. But the timing still matters. An event invented inside the bid window, paid for by Meridian, with the buyer at the centre, still reads as marketing dressed as networking. The pre-clear note has to capture why Naomi was satisfied this is the first kind, not the second.

Wednesday, 4:30 PM −1
Sam Holt

Drop the rugby. Single £200 conference ticket, industry book, hand-written note from Joe. Under the threshold. Log it on the way out.

Iona Whitfield

Sensible. Proportionate.

Narrator

The package goes out Thursday. Diana's PA logs the conference ticket and the book in Linsel's incoming-hospitality register the same morning. Diana doesn't decline, doesn't accept, doesn't acknowledge. The bid lands the following Friday. Whoever scores it has now seen Meridian's name on the buyer-side register the week before they read the proposal.

Below The Threshold Is Not Below The Test

Pre-approval thresholds are a procedural backstop, not the legal test. The Section 1 test asks whether the advantage was given intending to induce improper performance, and the SFO hospitality guidance reads value alongside timing and recipient role. A £200 conference ticket aimed personally at the buyer, sent by the bidder during the bid window, hits the timing axis whether or not it clears the £250 hurdle. MoJ Principle 1 expects judgement, not threshold-shopping.

Friday, 9:55 AM · bid room, two days before submission
Narrator

Aaron knocks before stepping in. He has a single sheet of A4 with him.

Aaron Whitlock

Sam, before the bid goes Friday. I went back through Joe's expense reports for the Linsel pre-bid period. Two dinners with Diana's procurement analyst at restaurants Joe didn't pre-clear. Both under £250. Both inside the bid window. Neither on the giving-side register.

Aaron Whitlock

I'm not raising this to get Joe in trouble. I'm raising it because the proposal goes out Friday and I'm putting my name on the cover page as the BD lead under your sign-off. I want to know we're not going to have a problem the day after the award.

Narrator

Aaron is doing the M1 Joe-Harding move on you, the right way round. The bid is two days from going out. The procedural question is what happens before submission so the bid stands up to retrospective review.

Activity · Pre-submission ethics checklist

Six statements about the Linsel bid as it stands today. Check the ones you believe are true or defensible. Leave the rest blank. Wrong ticks and wrong blanks both lose points.

Checked = you think the statement is true / defensible. Unchecked = you think it's false / overreach.

Portrait of Naomi Aldridge, Compliance Manager
⚖ Decision Point 3 of 3

The bid goes out Friday. The Linsel near-miss is on the file. Joe's eighteen-month register gap is a separate question Iona wants on her desk Monday. Iona has asked for a recommendation that BD and Compliance both put their names on, so it lands as a joint paper, not a Compliance edict. What does the recommendation say about giving-side hospitality, specifically?

What do you put in place?

Your choice

A BD-side pre-clear flow, retrospective audit of Joe's prior bids, and quarterly board reporting on giving-side hospitality.

Mirror the receiving-side rules from Module 1: 90-second pre-clear form for any spend above £250 directed at a customer, 24-hour Naomi SLA, automatic block during a live tender. Commission a quiet retrospective audit of Joe's prior bids over the last 24 months to scope Section 7 exposure on contracts already signed. Quarterly aggregate reporting to the board so giving-side spend is visible. Joint training run by BD and Compliance once a year.

Your choice

Drop the giving-side threshold during tenders and send a company-wide reminder.

Lower the giving-side pre-approval threshold from £250 to £100 during active tenders, send the policy reminder to all BD staff, raise it at the next sales kick-off. Proportionate, not heavy-handed. No new system. No retrospective audit. The rules are clearer for the next bid.

Your choice

File the incident note. The policy already covers it.

The procedure exists. Naomi has the file note. The rugby tickets never went. The bid went out clean. Drafting an incident note for next year's audit is enough. Anything more risks turning a clean win into a witch hunt of a senior bid manager.

Portrait of Iona Whitfield, CFO
Following Monday, 9:00 AM · Iona's office +3
Iona Whitfield

Walk me through it.

Sam Holt

Three pieces. BD-side pre-clear: 90-second form, anything over £250 going out to a prospect, 24-hour Naomi SLA, automatic block during a live tender. Retrospective audit on Joe's last 24 months of bids, scoped to the contracts that closed without giving-side register entries. Quarterly aggregate reporting to the board so giving-side spend is on the record alongside revenue.

Iona Whitfield

The audit is the part the board will fight. If it finds something, every bid manager who's ever closed an account will think they're next.

Sam Holt

If the audit finds something, the SFO will find it twice as fast and with twice the cost. Volunteering the look is the cheapest version of finding out. Section 7 doesn't ask whether we knew, it asks whether we had adequate procedures. An audit is what adequate procedures look like in motion.

The Three Pillars On The Giving Side

Principle 1 (Proportionate): a 90-second form sized to BD's actual workflow, with hard automatic blocks during tender windows. Principle 4 (Due Diligence): a retrospective audit of prior BD activity is what due diligence looks like applied to the company's own salesforce, not just to suppliers. Principle 6 (Monitoring): quarterly board reporting makes the system self-correcting and visible to non-executives, which is what the SFO expects when it asks how the procedure operates in practice.

Friday, 2:00 PM +1
Sam Holt

Giving-side threshold drops to £100 during active tenders. Reminder out Monday. Naomi and I cover it at the next sales kick-off.

Iona Whitfield

Sensible. Not heavy-handed.

Narrator

The email goes out Monday. Open rate is 68%. By Friday it's been forgotten. Six months later a different bid lead at Meridian sends two £90 dinners to the same procurement analyst on a different account. Each event is below threshold. The pattern is the one Aaron flagged about Joe, with a different name on the file.

Communication Is Not A System

MoJ Principle 5 separates communication (telling people the policy exists) from training and procedural enforcement (making sure they apply it under pressure). An email and a kick-off slide are the first. A pre-clear form with hard blocks and a retrospective audit are the second. Without the audit, prior bids stay in the file unexamined, and the Section 7 defence on those contracts depends on procedures the company has now noticed weren't being followed.

Eighteen months later −2
Sam Holt

I've drafted the file note. Procedure is there, Naomi has the audit trail. We don't need to make it heavier than the situation needed.

Iona Whitfield

Fair. These things happen.

Narrator

The note goes on the file. Joe's eighteen-month register gap is never audited. Meridian wins Linsel. Two years later, Calthorpe loses a different competitive bid in the same sector and asks its lawyers to look at how Meridian wins what Meridian wins. The lawyers find five contracts where the BD lead was Joe and the giving-side register has no entries from the bid window. They write to the SFO. The SFO's first request to Meridian is for the giving-side hospitality register covering the relevant tender periods.

Individual Note Versus Systemic Fix

Section 7 places the duty on the company, not the individual. The defence asks whether Meridian's procedures were adequate to prevent the conduct, applied to every bid the company ran. A single file note on a near-miss does no monitoring, no training, and no procedural improvement. MoJ Principle 6 requires the company to review and update procedures in light of experience. Meridian had the experience. Nothing was reviewed.

Six months on

Where the Linsel bid sits

The bid went out without rugby tickets. Whether Meridian won or lost the account matters less than what now sits on the file about how Meridian sells. What happens between Sam, Joe and the next prospect depends on what Sam put in place.

Your Result
/ 17

Your Decisions

What to take into the next bid

1. A line you can use in the bid room. "The tickets don't go this side of the award. £620 a head, ten days from submission, hits both s.1 indicators. We bridge through a working lunch on the books, with an agenda Naomi has signed." Names the value, the timing, the threshold, and the route.
2. Below the threshold is not below the test. The s.1 question is intent and proximity, not whether you cleared a number. Pre-clear values plus timing plus recipient role together, not value alone.
3. A register gap on a senior bid manager is not hygiene. Eighteen months without a giving-side entry is a flag. Retrospective audit of prior bids is what Section 7 expects of a company that has just noticed the gap.
4. "Calthorpe will" is not a defence. The bar is what your company can stand behind in a regulator's office, not what the competitor is willing to do.

Key Legal References

Section 1

Bribing another person

SFO Guidance

Hospitality approach

Section 7

Failure to prevent

PIDA 1998

Whistleblower protection

MoJ Principle 4

Due diligence

MoJ Principle 6

Monitoring & review

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Course Complete · Module 2 of 2

That's the course.

Two modules, two angles on the same regulation. Module 1 was hospitality coming at you. Module 2 was hospitality going out. The s.1 test is the same in both directions: value, timing, recipient role. Take the module quiz above to record your completion and download your certificate.