bribary
“So, businesses can continue to provide
tickets for sporting events, take clients to dinner, offer gifts to clients as a reflection of good relations or pay for reasonable travel expenses in order to demonstrate goods or services will be fine as long as it is reasonable and proportionate. “Facilitation payments, which are payments
to induce officials to perform routine function which they are otherwise obligated to perform are bribes although legally required administrative fees or fast-track services are not facilitation payments.” The IoD said: “A business is required to
take steps to prevent bribery. You can defend yourself against prosecution by showing you took steps to address the risk of bribery. “Make a risk assessment. Check the
nature of your sales, the size of contracts and whether permits are required. Note any third- party involvement through joint ventures or agents. “Conduct due diligence: dig
down through your business relationships to discover exactly how sales are
achieved. “Huge numbers of small businesses trading
only in Britain have nothing to fear. They will assess the risks from the new law and find them negligible. “Procedures should be proportionate to
the risk. Typical measures include anti-bribery clauses in contracts and correspondence, due diligence checks on suppliers, and staff training about your anti-bribery stance. “Do all this, and the Ministry of Justice
is unlikely to prosecute you for failing to prevent bribery, even if a business associate does get into trouble over possible bribes. Obviously, if you have no procedures in place, the Ministry will be very concerned.”
The institute offers this advice about what
an anti-bribery policy should contain:? • Many small businesses could fit a practical
policy on one side of A4. • Put something in writing that says: ‘we
held these meetings, assessed these risks and put these proportionate measures in place’. Say you will continue with this approach, reviewing it annually, in case the risks change. • State that your business is committed
at the top level to preventing bribery. Explain how you communicate that message - for example through meetings and memos - to everyone involved.
THEbusiness QUARTER 23
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