Incentives to Corporate Integrity and Cooperation in accordance with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption

Create systems of legal incentives for companies’ integrity efforts, hence encouraging business to come forward and report internal incidents of corruption.

This United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) project aimed to promote States’ implementation of articles 26 (Liability of legal persons), 32 (Protection of witnesses, experts and vic- tims), 37 (Cooperation with law enforcement authorities) and 39 (Cooperation between national authorities and the private sector) of the United Nations Convention against Corruption and to facilitate private actors’ compliance with the Tenth Principle of the UN Global Compact.

The project aimed to achieve its goals by:

• Reviewing, in the framework of high-level committees of public officials and private sector representatives, legislation on corporate liability and legal incentives for companies to voluntarily report on internal incidents of corruption and cooperate with public authorities, and recommending amendments to ensure full compliance with the Convention.
• Designing and delivering joint training workshops for law enforcement, judicial authorities and companies’ representatives on existing domestic laws governing corporate liability.
• Organising meetings of international experts to share existing knowledge and generate innovative approaches on how governments should best encourage and reward companies which report instances of corruption.

Through the project, UNODC published a Resource Guide on State Measures for Strengthening Corporate Integrity as well as legislative baseline studies describing compliance of local laws and policies in Mexico and India to prevent and combat corruption in the private sector with the UNCAC, as well as current practices, challenges and training needs that have to be addressed.

In India, the project’s advocacy efforts contributed to progress made towards the Whistleblowers Protection Act of 2011; the Companies Act of 2013 and corporate governance norms issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in April 2014.