On September 10, 2020, the Basel Institute's Tim Wittig and Juhani Grossmann presented to the Dutch Compliance Officers Association on the nexus of corruption and illegal wildlife trade. 

Thirty-five compliance experts, largely from financial institutions, participated in the conference. It featured a lively debate about:

Representatives from nine leading Collective Action initiatives that offer local anti-corruption compliance certification gathered yesterday at a virtual roundtable. The event was part of a wider Basel Institute's project on certification initiatives funded by the KBA-NotaSys Integrity Fund.

The idea is to support local certification of anti-corruption compliance programmes in particular in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that supply larger customers.

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.

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.