The director of a British company who bribed a Ugandan official escaped jail yesterday in the first foreign bribery case since the British government promised to crack down on the crime.

Niels Tobiasen, the 65-year-old Danish managing director of a Wiltshire firm, pleaded guilty to paying £80,000 in bribes and was given a five-month jail sentence which was suspended for a year.

On Monday, Ananias Tumukunde, a 31-year-old adviser to the Ugandan president, was jailed for a year for receiving the payments, dressed up as "local tax".

Southwark crown court in London had heard that Tumukunde demanded the bribes after Tobiasen's firm was given a contract to protect world leaders, including the Queen and Gordon Brown, at a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Kampala last November. Tobiasen's firm, CBRN Team, received six contracts from the Ugandan government worth a total of £500,000.

The court heard that Tobiasen admitted the payments soon after he was arrested by City of London police and had "fully" cooperated. Tobiasen made five payments between June last year and February this year to Tumukunde and a Ugandan army officer, Rusoke Tagaswire, who is still at large.

Anti-corruption campaigners pointed out that the two are the only people to be convicted since Britain signed an anti-corruption treaty 11 years ago. During the same period, the US secured 105 foreign bribery prosecutions, said Transparency International.