• Home
  • Global
  • Latin America & the Caribbean
  • Africa
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • South Asia
  • Eurasia
  • Asia

Corporate Compliance Trends

~ Anti-Corruption Compliance in Emerging & Frontier Markets

Tag Archives: UK Bribery Act

No More Business as Usual in Africa?

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by Anna Kompanek in Global

≈ Comments Off on No More Business as Usual in Africa?

Tags

Africa, anti-bribery, anti-corruption, business ethics, compliance, corporate culture, FCPA, risk management, UK Bribery Act, value chains

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Creative Commons

France has long been criticized for falling short on enforcement of its international obligations to fight corruption abroad, including the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention that mandated member states to criminalize bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions. That changed with the introduction of Sapin II, a new law similar to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act that penalizes companies for failing to mitigate corruption risks in their operations, including third parties. A significant recent probe under this law shines the spotlight on Africa.

French tycoon Vincent Bollore and two of his associates have been placed under formal investigation over suspicious deals in Guinea and Togo, respectively. An advertising agency tied to Bollore allegedly undercharged the presidents of Guinea and Togo to help them win elections nearly a decade ago and, in return, the Bollore Africa Logistics company won contracts to operate ports in Conakry and Lomé.  Read More...

Anti-Corruption Compliance for the Oil and Gas Industry in Indonesia

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Maiko Nakagaki in Asia

≈ Comments Off on Anti-Corruption Compliance for the Oil and Gas Industry in Indonesia

Tags

anti-corruption, compliance, extractive industries, FCPA, Indonesia, oil and gas, procurement, UK Bribery Act

Corruption costs a lot of money for citizens around the globe. The World Economic Forum and the World Bank estimates that corruption reduces global GDP by 5% ($2.6 trillion) per year with over $1 trillion paid in bribes. For businesses, corruption makes up 10% of the total cost of doing business and up to 25% of the cost of procurement contracts in emerging markets. This phenomenon is felt by the private sector in Indonesia.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2014, which measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption, Indonesia was ranked 107th most corrupt nation out of 175 countries. While the government has been taking steps to improve the situation (for example in 2003, Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK, was formed to combat political corruption), fighting corruption remains difficult and bribes are a widely accept part of doing business. And this is certainly the case for mid-sized companies in the oil and gas sector.  Read More...

Compliance Q&A with Anwar Hashmi

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Stephanie Bandyk in Global, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Compliance Q&A with Anwar Hashmi

Tags

compliance, compliance officers, ethics, UK Bribery Act, whistleblowers

June Anwar Hashmi 1Anwar Hashmi is a Senior Consultant within Global Ethics & Compliance at Integrity Leadership Partners, LLC  in the Washington DC Metro Area. He has over 14 years of experience in designing, developing, and implementing Global Ethics Programs at Tata Steel, a global Fortune 500 company and Tata Group’s flagship company. Hashmi has been associated with the Business Ethics Program of the company since the Tata Group developed its first Code of Ethics in 1998. While at Tata Steel, Hashmi was actively engaged in the institutionalization of the Global Ethics Program through training and sensitization as well as development and implementation of an ethics system and policies. He also initiated a process of benchmarking the Ethics Program among the world’s top multinational companies. Following the UK Bribery Act’s enactment in 2010, Hashmi launched an initiative to raise awareness amongst Tata Group Companies. The combination of these efforts contributed to Tata Steel being named as one of the World’s 100 Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute.

CIPE’s Stephanie Bandyk discusses with Hashmi the factors that led to Tata Steel formalizing the firm’s unwritten code of ethics. Hashmi also discusses what motivated other emerging market companies to follow Tata’s lead.

  • Corporate compliance and ethics programs are still not universally common around the world. In your experience, what are some of the factors behind companies in emerging and frontier markets recognizing the need for such programs and then taking concrete steps to implement them?

I can speak about the Tata Group. Codes of Ethics and Corporate Ethics Programs were not well-known subjects amongst Indian corporations. Tata Group had a long legacy of promoting ethical business conduct, which was like an unwritten code for the Group and religiously followed. Prior to 1990, the Indian economy was closed and there was not much competition, with companies operating in a protected environment. Price was determined by government agencies, so selling your product was not an issue. Then, with globalization and the opening of the Indian economy, which led to unprecedented growth of the Group both domestically and internationally, there was a felt need for codifying the values and business conduct to create value-synergy amongst the varied Group companies operating in different regions. A written document could give guidelines on the mode of Business and Personal conduct for the Group companies and employees.  The Western experience on this was used as a best practice and the Group developed its first Code of Ethics in 1998. We benchmarked the Code with the top Global Corporations Code. Since I was involved in the designing and development of the Code, I still remember how we gathered codes of ethics of U.S. companies like Martin Marietta and many others to use as a standard. With the development of the Code, the Group felt the need for an implementation program that could be applied uniformly across the Group. The implementation program was developed and became known as Management of Business Ethics (MBE).

  • What’s motivated other companies to develop similar programs?

Tata Group was the first to develop a formal Code of Conduct. With the opening of the Indian economy, other Indian companies also started looking for business opportunities globally, especially within Western markets, and searched for association or joint partnerships with the U.S. and other developed countries. Such ethics programs are a requirement of doing business in Western or similar markets – companies need to have articulated values and a defined code of ethics. This led to other Indian companies developing a Code of Conduct and a structure to implement it. In fact, Tata’s experience was used as a benchmark by most of the Indian companies. I was personally called upon by several companies, in both the public and private sectors and other agencies, to help them develop a code of ethics. Read more…

Combatting the Cascading Costs of Corruption

26 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Rachel Grossman in Global

≈ Comments Off on Combatting the Cascading Costs of Corruption

Tags

anti-corruption, compliance, corrruption, development, FCPA, SMEs, UK Bribery Act, value chains

usaid-anti-corruption

Corruption imposes significant economic and social costs on development across all sectors, undercutting both democratic governance and economic prosperity. To solve this immense global problem, the development community and the private sector will need to work together to target the sources of corruption

To this end, USAID’s Governance and Rule of Law Program released a guide to anti-corruption programming entitled “Practitioner’s Guide to Anticorruption Programming” earlier this year.

“Sometimes I see that the private sector and NGOs are at loggerheads and don’t see each other’s perspective or how they can work together,” said Kenneth Barden, a key contributor to the guide. This realization, in part, inspired the creation of the Guide in order to, “let everyone know what we’ve learned and build on those experiences – and to think abstractly and to harmonize, get a more focused approach,” said Barden. Read more…

Could Rana Plaza Help Make Labor Standards a Corruption Issue?

06 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by Jenna Mace in Asia

≈ Comments Off on Could Rana Plaza Help Make Labor Standards a Corruption Issue?

Tags

anti-corruption, Bangladesh, FCPA, supply chain, UK Bribery Act

rana-plaza

In recent years, the private sector has been increasingly responsive to supply chain issues. This is a result of two distinct forces – one related to corruption, and the other related to issues such as human trafficking and child and other labor issues. While the focus on corruption has largely resulted from legislation such as the FCPA and UKBA, interest in labor-related supply chain issues has often been spurred by NGOs, public pressure, and the media.

However, investigations resulting from the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse may change that. On April 24, 2013, over 1,130 people were killed in the building collapse while many employees were making clothing for western companies. While the accident and the resulting public outcry drove some companies to sign accords promising to establish fire and building safety programs, other companies did nothing.

In July of this year, the Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Agency filed charges against 18 people in connection with the disaster, finding that they “grossly breached the building code.” Although bribery may have played a role in the accident — municipal workers were held liable for giving Rana permission to build more floors on top of the existing structure, although they had no authority to do so — the commission’s decision makes no mention of bribery or corruption. Instead, they hold private sector actors accountable directly on the basis of violating local building codes. Read more…

Ghana: A Trendsetter for Resource-Rich Emerging Markets?

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Peako Jenkins in Africa

≈ Comments Off on Ghana: A Trendsetter for Resource-Rich Emerging Markets?

Tags

anti-corruption, compliance, extractive industries, FCPA, Ghana, OECD, UK Bribery Act

ghana_oil

In four out of six petroleum agreements recently approved by Ghana’s Parliament, the government required oil and gas producers to certify compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), UK Bribery Act, and OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. At an event in June sponsored by the Ghana government, the FCPA was referred to as model legislation for fighting abuses in the oil and gas industry. This new standard highlights the importance of anti-corruption compliance for companies and businesses seeking to do business in global markets. Read more…

Welcome to Corporate Compliance Trends

31 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by John Morrell in Global

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brazil Clean Companies Act, compliance, corruption, FCPA, OECD, UK Bribery Act

The need for anti-corruption compliance programs in companies of all sizes in global value chains has never been greater. Since 2006, the U.S. government has settled or prosecuted nearly 300 corruption cases against companies from around the world, including many where the corrupt conduct originated from multinational corporations’ suppliers, vendors, and agents. The average cost of resolving these enforcement actions now tops $80 million.

Beyond the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the UK Bribery Act, new anti-corruption laws with international reach are hitting the books, such as Brazil’s Clean Companies Act, introduced earlier this year. Similarly, many international bodies, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Chamber of Commerce, have introduced conventions and norms meant to combat bribery of foreign officials. Few doubt that this growing global trend toward rooting corruption out of international business conduct is here to stay.

Still, as a recent study found, the number of global companies with anti-corruption policies has increased by only 1 percent over the past two years, and a sizable minority of these companies have yet to implement even the most basic of compliance programs. Nearly 60 percent of global companies surveyed said they never train third parties despite the fact that many compliance actions have resulted from conduct by agents or intermediaries.

While governments and international organizations set anti-corruption rules and standards, and while law enforcement agencies around the world aggressively pursue potential violations, many companies simply lack sufficient practical knowledge on how to comply with these new global norms. Understanding what effective anti-corruption compliance looks like and how to set up internal compliance programs that mitigate the risk of corruption is an especially daunting challenge for firms operating in emerging and frontier markets, where the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) has worked since 1983 with local partners such as chambers of commerce, business associations, and economic think tanks.

To share our experiences from supporting private sector-focused anti-corruption programs in high-risk countries around the globe, and to help advance international best practices on anti-corruption compliance in these countries, CIPE is launching this new website, Corporate Compliance Trends. Read more…

“The Business Case for Anti-Corruption Compliance” Get Anti-Corruption Training, Now Online!

Convening compliance practitioners, firms, and thought leaders working toward business-driven solutions to corruption.

This blog is produced by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit dedicated to strengthening democracy through private enterprise and market-oriented reform.

CIPE is the international affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and CIPE’s programs are at the cutting edge of anti-corruption and corporate governance around the world. With more than 30 years’ experience in more than 100 countries, CIPE reduces the cost and risk of operating in high-risk markets.

CIPE logo

Archives

Anti-Corruption Compliance Guidebook

ac-guide-cover Download CIPE's guidebook for anti-corruption compliance at mid-sized companies in emerging markets.

Sign Up for Our Monthly Newsletter

Enter your information below to sign up for our monthly Compliance Frontiers newsletter.





Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

On Social Media

Tweets by CIPE_ACGC

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.