Hiperos Blog Anti Bribery and Anti Corruption Compliance - No Place Left to Hide?

This week the Hiperos team will be on the road speaking with lots of companies about Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption (ABAC) compliance. On Thursday, Greg Dickinson, our CEO addresses a group of oil and gas compliance executives at the 4th Annual Oil and Gas Supply Chain Compliance Conference in Houston. On the same day, I have the privilege of presenting on an OCEG panel on the topic of Managing Third Party Corruption Risk. Jay Martin of Baker Hughes, with whom I co-chair the OCEG Third Party Management Round Table, will also be presenting and I'm looking forward to a lively and, hopefully insightful conversation.I know that many of our discussions this week will be with compliance, risk and audit executives who feel as if they have to work with one arm tied behind their back; on the one hand their remit, costs and risk (personal and for their companies) is growing. On the other hand, I'm yet to speak with a General Counsel or Chief Compliance Officer who is not concerned with his or her lack of resources. In many cases, this leads to considerable compromise and conversations that go something like this: "We work with lots of third parties, thousands of them. However, when it comes to ABAC risk, we know who our high risk third parties are." "We're concerned about our sales agents who work in "high risk" geographies." "It's impossible to manage my thousands of third parties; I'm only concerned with a few hundred." While I'm not advocating that all third parties present the same risk for bribery and corruption, nor that all third parties should be treated with the same level of scrutiny, I do question the notion that a company with thousands of third parties knows definitively where their ABAC risks come from. Which leads us to two questions:Should a company screen all of its third parties for possible ABAC risk?Is it possible - without hiring armies of staff or breaking the bank, to screen thousands of third parties?The short answer is yes. To get the full answer, however, join us this Thursday at 11am ET for "Managing Third Party Corruption Risk: A View from the OCEG Illustrated Series".