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Canadians doing business abroad need to know that bribing foreign officials and encouraging corruption in foreign countries carries the risk of stiff criminal sentences at home, an Ottawa judge warned Friday.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland issued the warning while sentencing Ottawa consultant Nazir Karigar — the first person to be convicted under Canada’s foreign anti-corruption law — to three years in prison.

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Prior to this case, only corporations had been convicted under the act.

The 67-year-old Karigar acted with “a complete sense of entitlement” while engineering a bid-rigging scheme that involved bribing Air India officials and an Indian cabinet minister, the judge said.

“The corruption of foreign public officials, particularly in developing countries, is enormously harmful and is likely to undermine the rule of law,” he said.

“The idea that bribery is simply a cost of doing business in many countries, and should be treated as such by Canadian firms competing for business in those countries, must be disavowed.”