ABC Policies are utilitarian
Under most Anti-Corruption and Anti-Bribery laws, corrupt conducts by those associated to an organisation expose the latter to corporate liability. The culpable company is subject to civil and criminal penalties like sanctions, fines, disgorgement of ill-gotten profits, etc. and its Leadership faces imprisonment.
Therefore, ABC law regulators around the world put the onus on companies to understand the connection between their operations and corruption risks. All areas of business and non-business related operations need to be evaluated for the likelihood of bribery occurring and severity of its impact.
Prevention, detection and response are key principles behind framing control measures to address these enterprise risks. Control measures can be inscribed in written policies, thereby providing easy means to employees proactively seeking guidance to perform more complex tasks within an organisation.
Why Policies Matter
Policies are documented statements of matters that present material risk to an organisation, and carry instructions to mitigate the emergence of such risk.
Policies also express the disciplinary actions to be undertaken should policy requirements be breached. Policy owners can easily communicate the guidelines and functions under the policies – training, publishing relevant communications, testing and reporting findings of non-compliance – these modes of communication aim to set forth uniformity and consistency into decision-making and day-to-day operations, thus ensuring an organisation is in compliance to laws and regulations.
Procedures in Policies
Types of risks vary for organisations and change with time. Policies must keep up with updates in laws, regulatory enforcement pressures, and new business strategies and the related challenges. By regularly testing and reviewing procedural compliance and non-compliance from audit reports, processes vis-a-vis policy observation can be further enhanced or improved upon.
ABC Policies
In giving meaning to anti-corruption practices in business, specific mechanics to business conducts have to be integrated into dedicated ABC policies. For instance, the provision of meals and entertainment to non-employees on a company expense account should be void of the intention to bribe, and permitted under a set of boundaries which includes recognising a legitimate business purpose, a venue conducive for the business purpose and setting a pre-approved spend limit, as covered in a gifts-meals-and-entertainment policy. The conflict-of-interest policy advises to refrain from exploiting opportunities meant for the company for personal gains. Meanwhile, business strategies that involve lobbying or tender-bidding activities have to have distinguishing policy requirements. And where applicable, ABC Policies would isolate strict requirements for dealing with government officials due to the associated high risk significance.
Organisations should invest time and resources into implementing a sound Ethics and Compliance Program.
ABC policies, a key catalyst for sensible business ethics, pave the way for employees to be empowered to do only honest, sustainable business in a highly-regulated environment.
When customers, vendors, shareholders and any other stakeholders are associating positivity to a company and its employees revered for a reputable integrity, the rewards ensuing are worth the commitment.
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