This report aims to provide an overview of business integrity and anti-bribery legislation, policies and practices applicable to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) operating across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

Companies today, in particular banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions, increasingly operate their businesses in a group structure. These financial groups have a growing presence in markets worldwide and the economy as a whole. To do business effectively and efficiently in group structures, corporate groups should be managed in a holistic and integrated manner, in much the same way as an enterprise.

Transparency International’s Business Integrity Country Agenda (BICA) seeks to create a relevant body of evidence on business integrity in a given country, a widely shared agenda for reform and a collective momentum for change towards more business integrity among key stakeholders.

Transparency International envisages that the BICAs will become important reference points for fighting corruption in business practices within countries and around the globe.

Settlements can provide an important channel to hold companies to account for wrongdoings and resolve foreign bribery and other cases without resorting to a full trial (civil or criminal), or contested administrative proceeding.

Yet, their deterrent effect can be questionable if they are not transparent, and do not provide effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions and if there is no judicial process. Finally, there should be reparations for the victims of the offence.

This Learning Review was the first comprehensive analysis of experiences with Integrity Pact implementation in over 20 countries over two decades.

The main findings confirm that Integrity Pacts:

This Transparency International report evaluates the transparency of corporate reporting by the world’s 124 largest publicly listed companies. The report assesses the disclosure practices of companies with respect to their anti-corruption programmes, company holdings and the disclosure of key financial information on a country-by-country basis. It follows on from a 2012 report which focused on the world’s 105 largest publicly traded companies.

The Business Principles for Countering Bribery provide a framework for companies to develop comprehensive anti-bribery programmes. Whilst many large companies have no-bribes policies all too few implement these policies effectively.

This report from Transparency International encourages companies to consider using the business principles as a starting point for developing their own anti-bribery programmes or to benchmark existing ones.