When it comes to trying to avoid getting caught up in the proliferation of anti-corruption legislation worldwide, the Royal Bank of Canada is opting to follow the U.K. Bribery Act and embedding it as part of its global anti-money laundering process.
“When the U.K. Bribery Act came out we decided to migrate to the highest common standard,” said Thomas Smee, senior vice president and deputy general counsel, RBC Financial Group speaking on a panel on Canadian securities regulations at the recent Association of Corporate Counsel annual meeting in Denver. “My approach is to go across all of the legislation and go to the highest common standard.”
RBC does business in about 50 different countries in different ways around the world and when the U.K. Bribery Act came out, Smee said the bank decided to find the most onerous piece of legislation and follow it’s recommendations.
“We now ban facilitation payments globally — it’s a good example of how you have to surf the world for the most onerous thing and then adopt that as the standard,” said Smee. “You have to assess the risk of corruption across your organization and the type of risks you might encounter.”
Smee explained that the U.K. Bribery Act has a compliance defence. If you had a tough compliance policy and were following it, when the company, which might otherwise be blameless, is caught in an act committed by an isolated employee it can demonstrate that steps were taken to try and prevent anything from happening.
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