Transparency International UK launched a new online tool this month to provide businesses with practical and in depth guidance on tackling bribery and corruption.
In producing this tool we’ve worked with over 120 leading compliance and legal experts, over the course of eight years and we’re proud to be able to offer it as a free-to-use resource for businesses.
The guidance presents international best practice in tackling bribery.
It’s naturally been informed by guidance to the 2010 UK Bribery Act, the Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act, the ISO37001 standard, and other national laws. But it aims to offer a higher, yet still achievable, standard.
We’ve found that powerful anti-bribery and corruption legislation, including more recent laws such as Sapin II in France and the Brazilian Clean Company Act, has helped create a new, demanding international baseline in anti-bribery compliance. Consequently, companies which adopt a single, global, standard consistent across all their operations, will be best placed to operate legally and ethically around the world.
TI-UK’s guidance is designed to help companies create such a standard for themselves. In addition to core bribery risks, the guidance covers other areas of corruption risk that companies increasingly need to be aware of, such as political engagement, as well as organisational transparency and corporate reporting.
TI’s previous anti-bribery guidance has had considerable influence not just among the compliance and legal community, but also on the UK Government’s own guidance to the Bribery Act, and we hope that this new tool will have a broader global impact.
The tool can be used to allow any company to benchmark their own approach to tackling bribery against TI’s recommendations. Furthermore, because the online portal provides guidance in several layers of detail — from high level summaries to detailed advice — it can be used by businesses at all stages of the development or improvement of their anti-bribery program.
The portal is a dynamic resource, with new features and content, so the site will always have TI’s latest thinking on it. Companies can also direct their third parties to the guidance in order to help raise standards among those they do business with.
As recent scandals have shown, even highly respected companies can be revealed to be relying on bribery and corruption to conduct their business. It’s almost inevitable that strengthening either the culture, governance or anti-bribery program within these companies would have prevented such incidents or at least provided an early warning.
Our work is aimed at those who are serious about tackling ABC risks, and we are always looking to hear from and connect with such companies. This guidance is published by Transparency International UK, the UK chapter of the global Transparency International movement, with the support of FTI Consulting and DLA Piper.
The guidance was authored by Peter Wilkinson, a corporate anti-bribery adviser who has extensive experience in countering private sector corruption, and has worked extensively with Transparency International, GRI, UNGC and the OECD.
“Global Anti-Bribery Guidance: Best practice for companies in the UK and overseas” is here.
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Rory Donaldson, pictured above, is Business Integrity Program Manager at Transparency International UK.
2 Comments
It's an excellent resource.
Very clear, concise, and well laid out. An very useful resource and bravo to TI-UK and contributors for making the tool free to use.
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