In the era of terrorism, cyber attacks, still existing corruption and other compliance risks, organization need more than ever effective compliance management systems.  They, however, face difficulties resulting  from social cultural and local differences when implementing compliance standards across the globe.  Our Congress serves as an exchange platform for delegates from business, academia, governments, international organizations, associations and more.  Let's sail this time in Hamburg together toward new approaches of cross border compliance & Integrity.

Click to read more...

Third party risk management is not a simple process of issuing a questionnaire at the time of on-boarding. Its an ongoing process that requires continual monitoring to ensure policies are being implemented as expected, training is taking place and that adverse actions, reports and incidents are immediately brought to the attention of the responsible in-house team.

Click to read more...

For some questions, there are no clear answers, for example, how to deal with the dilemma that a compliance bird eats nothing.  It seems to be a phenomenon that multinational companies would give up some business opportunities to make sure there is no violation or non-compliance of anti-bribery law, but there is a lot to do to make their businesses less under-competitive or more promising.


Click to read more...

Regarding the question if your company still sells drugs by giving kickbacks, there is surprisingly a large percentage of participants maintaining that their companies are still giving kickbacks.  Only a small percentage of participants said that their companies rather not dare to give kickbacks, while they maintained that there is no better way to market their products in keeping with the anti-bribery compliances.  There were participants stating that their companies do the marketing by introducing to their target audience the product characteristics, organizing academic activities and enhancing the after-sale services.    


Click to read more...

Shanghai Police arrested eight suspects from Farine, a famous French Bakery in Shanghai for using expired flour.  Four of the suspects have been detained while the other four have been released on bond pending the trial.  The president of Farine, Franck, Louis Pécol (a French national), has fled back to France.  The police raided the bakery after being tipped off by an anonymous whistle-blower about Farine’s worrisome sanitation condition and the use of expired flour for baking breads. As a result of the raid, 2300 parcels of flour were found to be faulty.

Click to read more...

Mr. Xi, Xiaoming was a Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme People's Court of China between June 2004 and July 2015. In July 2015, he was abruptly removed from office by the Communist Party's top body, suspected of corruption. On February 16, 2017, he received a sentence of life imprisonment for taking bribes. The court that passed the verdict found that Xi and his families took bribes as much as RMB 114,596,934 (approximately US$ 17 million).

Click to read more...

For the question, "what are your compliance duties on anti-bribery”, 394 selected Chinese anti-bribery law amounting to 48%, a 11% increase from the 37% from the 2015 survey. Comparatively, 216 selected the FCPA amounting to 26%; in terms of the UK Bribery Act, 139 people made selections amounting to 17%.  Despite the dwarfed rankings, we believe the FCPA is still the most influential law for those on whom the FCPA is applicable, so is UK Bribery Act. That said, Chinese anti-bribery law is a very important compliance obligation for companies doing business in China.  

Click to read more...

Although it is generally known that the FCPA prohibits those that are subject to it from making bribes to foreign governmental officials, many are not aware that “the FCPA prohibits payments to foreign officials, but not to foreign governments.” The annihilation of the transparency rule merely takes away the need for companies to fully disclose payments to foreign governments, the payment to which not outlawed under the FCPA.  It does not grant companies the ability to bribe foreign government officials, as the FCPA continues to prohibit payments to foreign government officials.

Click to read more...