With the increased awareness of corruption, the world is turning into a global village and the ease of doing business is the catchword among traders everywhere. The benefits are immense. But this has also created a free run for the moneyed business players who are looking to exploit the low-hanging fruit of opportunity in new regions.
So what if they had to bribe the powers that be in your country to win over a chunky government contract for transportation systems or communication systems or supply of food items?
You would think that they wouldn’t cut too many corners here to recover the bribe monies and break into an obscene amount of profit, wouldn’t you? Wrong!!
A new report, Exporting Corruption 2022, by transparency.org has given a dismal rating for the performance of companies in 47 leading global exporters in the war against corruption. Of these 47 countries, 43 are signatories to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention. Four leading non-OECD Convention exporters that were also assessed include China, India, Hong Kong SAR, and Singapore.
Transparency International has been independently tracking major trading countries’ progress against foreign bribery since 2009. The picture has been gradually getting worse since their 2018 study, hitting a new low this year.
Only Switzerland and the United States are now in the category of active enforcement, as Israel and the United Kingdom have dropped to moderate from active enforcement.
Major non-OECD Convention countries had little to no enforcement. These included China, the world’s top exporter, and India, which still has no legislation criminalising foreign bribery. This group of 38 countries accounts for 55 percent of all global exports with foreign bribery acts going largely unpunished here.
Only two countries – Latvia and Peru – have moved up a level since the year 2020 while nine – including Denmark and Italy – have dropped.
Take on Corruption with ISO 37001 Certification
Public and private sector organisations should strongly consider the ISO 37001 certification process, which would provide proper assurance that the organisation has succeeded in establishing, implementing, maintaining, reviewing, and improving its Anti-Bribery Management System.
ISO 37001 Anti-Bribery Management System is an internationally accepted standard that specifies the procedures an organisation should implement to prevent bribery while detecting and reporting any bribery incident.
The standard requires organisations to implement these procedures on a reasonable and proportionate basis according to the type and size of the organisation and the nature and extent of bribery risks faced. It applies to small, medium, and large organisations in the public and private sectors and can be implemented in any country. Though it will not provide absolute assurance that bribery will completely cease, the standard can help establish that the organisation has in place reasonable, proportionate, and adequate anti-bribery procedures.
About ABAC® Center of Excellence
ABAC® offers a complete suite of services and solutions designed to educate, equip and support the world’s leading business organisations with the latest best-in-practice risk & performance assessments, systems improvement & standards certification. The ABAC Center of Excellence Limited is fully accredited as a Conformity Assessment Body (Certification Body) to assist your organisation in attaining ISO 37001 certification through a thorough bribery risk assessment and audit covering the entire scope of the standard. The audit methodology is evidence-based, meaning any issues raised will be confirmed through adequate evidence that the ABAC Certification team has discovered during the audit.
Auditing techniques take a risk-based approach to examining your organisation’s Anti-Bribery Management System (ABMS), and the ABAC Certification team will increase the scale of the investigation if they determine that a specific process presents on a higher risk side. Factors such as Impact, Negligence, Minor, Major, and Critical are considered during the audit.
A separate audit method is a process-based approach where the ABAC Certification examines the organisation’s processes while considering the interaction between those processes. Finally, there is a sampling-based audit approach where ABAC Certification incorporates an appropriate sampling plan utilising samples from different ABMS processes to conclude and support the audit findings and results.
The audit is extremely thorough in its approach, which results in accredited certification for the scope of the ISO 37001 Anti-Bribery Management System. Because of the standard’s international acceptance and the thoroughness of the audit process, such certification can provide a valuable safeguard in demonstrating an “adequate procedures” compliance defence in cases posing a liability for a company’s failure to prevent bribery.
The most powerful “assurance” tool that public and private sector organisations can use in their defence strategy is ISO 37001 ABMS certification.
ABAC Certification is a subject specialist Accredited Certification Body accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service UKAS, the Emirates International Accreditation Center (EIAC), and the Department of Standards Malaysia.
