Combating corruption/ U.K.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has secured a key corporate conviction for foreign bribery after a London court sentenced the chairman and marketing director of a UK printing company for bribing public officials in Kenya and Mauritania.

Judge David Higgins on Thursday sentenced Christopher Smith, the 72-year-old chairman of Smith and Ouzman, to an 18-month suspended sentence and sales and marketing director Nicholas Smith, 43, was handed a three-year jail sentence.

The company, which specialises in security documents such as ballot papers and education certificates, will be sentenced later in a case dubbed "Chickengate", because the word "chicken" was used as a guise for "bribes" in email exchanges.

SFO wins corporate foreign bribery conviction-and one legal bill