PAST EVENTS
Proactive Corruption Prevention a Must
AmCham was honored this winter to host Dr. Stuart
Gilman, a global anti-corruption expert, for an informal discussion with about 20 members and representatives from other business organizations.
Dr. Gilman said companies everywhere should proactively assess their corruption-related risks and create
appropriate prevention systems. He explained that
the difficulty and expense of doing so depended on a
company’s size and risk profile; the bigger and more
diversified and dispersed company operations are,
the more critical a systematic approach. One example he cited was the increasingly common practice
of multinationals to include an “integrity umbrella”
clause in all supplier contracts, ensuring their partners are held responsible to uphold a zero-corruption
tolerance policy or lose business.
Mr. Veton Qoku, Attorney at Law from a regional law
firm KN Karanovic & Nikolic, introduced the group
to current Macedonian legislation, the U.S. Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act and UK Bribery Act, which are
both regularly enforced and have extraterritorial
impact. Mr. Qoku highlighted the lack of enforcement examples as well as the low visibility of those
bodies empowered – at least on paper - to enforce
the country’s relatively solid legal framework.
The group discussed topics ranging from challenges
and strategies used to prevent employees from gaining privately at the company’s expense to less clear
cases, such as how to respond when public authorities solicit company donations to support public
projects and programs.
Mr. Gilman said local business organizations could
encourage tangible improvements on all sides by
gathering concrete data from companies on the specific challenges they have faced. He said this was
particularly important, given that global corruption
indices tended to only scratch the surface (i.e., public
impressions and legal framework), not analyze