OECD Good Practice Guidelines for Businesses

Die OECD hat im Februar 2010 ein für jedes Unternehmen, das sich mit Compliance befasst, nützliche und empfehlenswerte “Guidelines” zur Verhinderung von Korruption veröffentlicht. Derartige State of the Art Vorgaben – zwölf an der Zahl – werden sicherlich auch von Gerichten und Strafverfolgungsbehörden bei der Bewertung von Korruptionsvorwürfen berücksichtigen, machen Sie sich also diese zu eigen oder fassen Sie diesbezüglich bei den von Ihnen im Bereich Compliance beauftragten Beratern / Anwälten nach. Good Practice Guidance for Companies…

Effective internal controls, ethics, and compliance programmes or measures for preventing and detecting foreign bribery should be developed on the basis of a risk assessment addressing the individual circumstances of a company, in particular the foreign bribery risks facing the company (such as its geographical and industrial sector of operation). Such circumstances and risks should be regularly monitored, re-assessed, and adapted as necessary to ensure the continued effectiveness of the company’s internal controls, ethics, and compliance programme or measures. Companies should consider, inter alia, the following good practices for ensuring effective internal controls, ethics, and compliance programmes or measures for the purpose of preventing and detecting foreign bribery: 1. strong, explicit and visible support and commitment from senior management to the company’s internal controls, ethics and compliance programmes or measures for preventing and detecting foreign bribery; 2. a clearly articulated and visible corporate policy prohibiting foreign bribery; 3. compliance with this prohibition and the related internal controls, ethics, and compliance programmes or measures is the duty of individuals at all levels of the company; 4. oversight of ethics and compliance programmes or measures regarding foreign bribery, including the authority to report matters directly to independent monitoring bodies such as internal audit committees of boards of directors or of supervisory boards, is the duty of one or more senior corporate officers, with an adequate level of autonomy from management, resources, and authority; 5. ethics and compliance programmes or measures designed to prevent and detect foreign bribery, applicable to all directors, officers, and employees, and applicable to all entities over which a company has effective control, including subsidiaries, on, inter alia, the following areas: i) gifts; ii) hospitality, entertainment and expenses; iii) customer travel; iv) political contributions; v) charitable donations and sponsorships; vi) facilitation payments; and vii) solicitation and extortion; 6. ethics and compliance programmes or measures designed to prevent and detect foreign bribery applicable, where appropriate and subject to contractual arrangements, to third parties such as agents and other intermediaries, consultants, repre…