Last month, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the conference “Integrity Pacts – Safeguarding EU Funds” in Brussels, hosted by Transparency International (TI) and with the participation of the European Commission. The conference was held in the context of a pilot project recently launched by the Commission - "Integrity Pacts - Civil Control Mechanism for Safeguarding EU Funds" – which will explore the applicabil
Building sectoral anti-corruption agreements among competitors can be a significant challenge in Collective Action. Sectoral agreements, or sectoral pacts, aim to create conditions of fair and transparent markets through discouraging certain practices of corruption by defining clear rules among competitors.
For businesses, sectoral agreements can be more effective than working in isolation, as many companies may fear being excluded from markets of interest for daring to announce having been subject to bribe solicitation in a procurement process, for example.
The role and scope of the compliance function is being reshaped; now compliance officers need to make their control environment work in practice and be able to express an opinion on how well it’s working or not working.
Cecilia Müller Torbrand is Senior Legal Counsel, Group Compliance Officer of the Maersk Group, the container shipping industry leader and one of the founding companies of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN). She spoke to the ICCA recently about the MACN and its work towards a shipping industry free of bribery and corruption. Mrs Müller Torbrand serves as the Chair for the network.
"The advantage to mankind of being able to trust one another penetrates into every crevice and cranny of human life: the economical is perhaps the smallest part of it, yet even this is incalculable." John Stuart Mill (1848) [ref]
In our first post we proposed a universal business ethics principle:“A basic duty of every organization is to earn stakeholder trust.”
The death toll following the huge explosions and chemical fires at the storage centre in Tianjin port in China last week has now exceeded 100, including dozens of fire fighters, and hundreds more seriously injured.
Toxic chemicals and gasses have necessitated an evacuation of the area and the clean up will be a long process.
In an interview with Tayfun Zaman, Secretary General at TEID , Ethics and Reputation Society, and Founder and Director of Turkish Integrity Center of Excellence, Mr Zaman talks about his own professional experience of launching and participating in a Collective Action initiative for custom brokers in Turkey. This article first appeared this summer in the Basel Institute Institute on Governance Annual Report 2014.
In Québec, construction is a major industry, with investments in 2014 of nearly $48 billion (CAN$), or 13% of the province’s GDP. Québec construction association (Association de la construction du Québec or ACQ) represents more than 60% of the province’s builders. But Canada’s second largest province has been through a major crisis of confidence after investigative journalists uncovered corruption and collusion in public construction contracts. This led authorities to launch a public Inquiry in 2011.
This piece was originally published in TRACE Trends, a version of which was originally published by Alexandra Wrage in The Compliance & Ethics Blog.
A version of this blog post initially appeared in the Summer 2015 edition of Ethical Boardroom Magazine.