Controversy over the call for debarment of a Canadian contractor is proving a litmus test of the World Bank's commitment to apply the same standards to corrupt Northern companies as it does to Southern companies and government officials. In a landmark judgment on 15 August, the Court of Appeal of Lesotho rejected the major appeal of Canadian engineering firm Acres International. The company was convicted of bribing a public official to win a contract on the World Bank-funded Lesotho Highlands Water Project last year.

The bribery case against Acres International Ltd. has been among the more spectacular in recent memory. This landmark legal battle saw the engineering consulting firm convicted on two counts of bribery surrounded allegations that Acres used an agent to bribe the head of a giant water and hydroelectric development in the southern African nation of Lesotho. The court pulled no punches: Acres' "cynical exploitation" of the project, "motivated as it was by greed, is the more reprehensible," Judge Jan Steyn wrote in his judgment. The company's reputation, he predicted, "will be sullied by the conviction and it will live in the shadow of the taint of corruption." But what action will the World Bank, a major funder of the project, and the Canadian government take against the company?