Our Collective Action team is working with companies to find synergies in human rights and anti-corruption compliance.
The idea: Companies invest significant resources in anti-corruption and human rights compliance programmes, often developing them separately. We believe there are synergies between these areas that will contribute to the effectiveness and cost efficiencies of both programmes.
At a high-level B20 panel on “Enhancing Integrity for Responsible and Inclusive Growth” on 24 August, Gemma Aiolfi, the Basel Institute’s Head of Compliance, Corporate Governance and Collective Action, discussed how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been forced to focus on survival in recent months.
Where corruption is already rampant, a crisis makes it worse. There are flash floods of relief money landing in contexts where power is imbalanced, governance is weak and criminals already know how to game the system. But we can fight back by making anti-corruption an integral part of crisis relief efforts. Like emergencies in the past, the covid-19 pandemic demonstrates that anti-corruption is not just a nice-to-have but can really save lives.
Our Head of Compliance and Collective Action Gemma Aiolfi has turned her decades of experience in anti-corruption compliance and corporate governance into a practical guide for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Written by our Head of Compliance and Collective Action Gemma Aiolfi, this indispensable book offers step-by-step guidance to small and mid-sized companies and non-profit organizations in managing corruption risks in overseas markets. It covers how and why to build a culture of integrity, develop a risk-based anti-corruption compliance programme, and engage with other industry players in collective action against shared corruption challenges.
I recently spoke about Collective Action as part of a virtual panel discussion along with Andrey Tsyganov, Deputy Minister of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service, on the topic of New Russian Antimonopoly Regulations. The webinar was organised by the Russian Business Ethics Network and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research, and is available on YouTube here.
The success of the Construction Transparency Initiative (CoST) in Malawi shows the impact Collective Action can have on addressing corruption and levelling the playing field even in difficult environments. But it needs perseverance, leadership and systematic efforts to drive policy change, as our interview below with Joe Chingani, Chairperson of CoST Malawi, demonstrates. First, some background.
This booklet was developed by Global Compact Network Brazil in partnership with Ethos Institute and companies of the construction sector. The purpose is to provide examples of emblematic cases of the main situations that may expose companies of the construction sector to solicitations of corruption, and therefore propose good preventive practices and responses to such scenarios.
Gemma Aiolfi, Head of Compliance and Collective Action, will explore some thorny areas of anti-corruption and human rights risk assessment and compliance during a forthcoming virtual “pre-evening dialogue” of the UN Global Compact Network in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
The focus is on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources to address due diligence, and more broadly compliance risks. The topic, though, is relevant to all companies who need to address both corruption and human rights risks in their international business operations.
In this article, Juhani Grossmann, IWT Team Leader at the Basel Institute on Governance, explores the role of public-private partnerships in tackling illegal wildlife trade (IWT).
This is the second article in our short series of perspectives on IWT and financial crime, in collaboration with the International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators.