Cape Town - After 18 months of painstaking deliberation Parliament's justice committee yesterday approved the new anti-corruption bill with a new provision which makes it an offence to offer or receive "gratification" which has not been earned.

The legislation to bring SA into line with its international obligations to contain corruption would have made the actions of some of the South African cricketers during the Hansie Cronje scandal guilty of corruption.

One clause will also make it an offence to agree to perform a corrupt act and then forget to go through with it.

The proposed law is now known as the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Bill and will be debated in the National Assembly on Thursday.

Committee chairman Johnny de Lange said that originally it was intended to reinstate the old common law crime of bribery, but on reflection, and after representations were made to the committee, it was decided to create a new statutory offence called the "receiving or offering of unauthorised gratification". This is effectively the old crime of bribery but its terms have been widened.

De Lange said bribery in common law was always seen as an offence confined to the public sector but that the new offence would broaden it to include employers and employees in the private sector. Both those who gave gratification over and above usual earnings and those who accepted it would be guilty of offences if apprehended.

The degree to which this legislation concentrates on the private as well as the public sectors is shown in the preamble to the bill, which says "corruption is a transnational phenomenon that affects all societies and economies and is equally destructive in both the public and private spheres of life".

The bill will also pass through Parliament before Public Service Minister Geraldine FraserMoleketi travels to Mexico next month to sign the United Nations Convention against Corruption on SA's behalf.

With acknowledgement to the Business Day.