Companies looking to strengthen business integrity have a myriad of standards and acronyms to decipher, tools and certification schemes to choose from and trade‑offs to consider. Capacity, costs and controls are evaluated and reevaluated to determine how a company can avoid corruption undermining the achievement of its goals. Getting it right can be costly, but that need not be the case. Companies are not alone in their efforts to strengthen anti-corruption compliance, and they share enough commonalities to make knowledge‑sharing a win-win.
Building on decades of work on corporate governance in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Compliance Without Borders is a new and innovative pilot project that helps SOEs put internationally recognised standards into action. The programme facilitates a peer exchange between anti-corruption compliance experts and SOEs, where the battle for business integrity may need to be harder fought.
Through peer learning, the programme promotes the implementation of good practices – notably those contained in the OECD Guidelines on Anti-Corruption and Integrity in State-Owned Enterprises. Those taking part in the programme are also contributing to the broader agenda of promoting business integrity and a level playing field through collective action, which is now encouraged in the Recommendation on Further Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. The Compliance Without Borders Handbook highlights the importance of integrity in SOEs, describes the success of the initial pilots and provides details on how other private and state‑owned firms can join.
The Compliance Without Borders programme draws on the deep SOE-related knowledge of the OECD’s Capital Markets and Financial Institutions Division, the private‑sector initiatives and experiences of leaders involved in the OECD’s Trust in Business initiative and the extensive compliance and collective‑action expertise of the Basel Institute on Governance. Compliance Without Borders was born from an idea emanating from the B20 and is financially supported by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ “Global Initiative to Galvanize the Private Sector as Partners to Combat Corruption”.
The initial pilot exchanges have received support from state ownership representatives who are delegates to the OECD’s Working Party on State Ownership and Privatisation Practices – the only standing international body looking at corporate governance and integrity of SOEs. The Handbook was written and designed by members of the Secretariat to the Working Party, in the Capital Markets and Financial Institutions Division of the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs. It has benefited from the direction and insights of the Trust in Business team of the Public Governance Directorate and reviews by colleagues and external experts.