Can a Small Business Mindset Contribute to Bribery and Other Forms of Corruption?

Published in ACAMS Today, Weaver’s Maria Tsennykh highlights the importance of focusing on controls and compliance to mitigate the risk of corruption. 

• As an organization grows, compliance officers and corporate leaders often face the challenge of aligning actual procedures with policies. How much should the compliance department or corporate leadership rely on already established, automatic and written manual controls instead of just trusting operational, regional, functional and other organization leaders to mitigate the risk of bribery and other forms of corruption?

If there is no suspicion or evidence of bribery or other forms of corruption, introducing new processes and controls designed to prevent such problems can be difficult to justify. As an organization grows and becomes geographically or organizationally dispersed, it may be hard to assess the value and rationale for implementing these new practices. But the risks and consequences are real. If an employee violates local or global anti-corruption laws (willfully or not), the organization will likely face harm to its reputation as well as the threat of legal action.

© 2021