OREANDA-NEWS. July 02, 2012. The Federal Antimonopoly Service held a meeting between FAS representatives and the President and CEO of the Centre for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Patricia Dowden, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

FAS was represented by the Head of the Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Timofey Nizhegorodtsev, Deputy Head of the Department for International Economic Cooperation, Andrey Yunak and an advisor to the State Procurement Department, Maria Krylova.

The discussion focused mostly on an idea put forward by the President of the Centre for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance to organize a round table on the best practices for compliance with the anti-corruption rules.

Patricia Dowden informed participants that the Centre for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance formed “Russian Energy Compliance Alliance”, the backbone of which are public leaders and business representatives of this important sector of the economy. According to Patricia Dowden, the multilateral alliance creates a possibility for Russian market to control compliance of non-government organizations and private persons with the anti-corruption law.

In his turn, Timofey Nizhegorodtsev talked about existing corrupted schemes used by Moscow representatives of some foreign companies that apply the norms of U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and various compliances as a cover-up or a justification of corruptive relationships in doing their business in Russia.

According to Timofey Nizhegorodtsev, the problem can be resolved “when a company has a commercial policy describing clear requirements and procedures for access of potential and existing counteragents to goods, and policy compliance that prevents risks of initiating investigations against the company upon signs of violating the antimonopoly law”.

As a result of the meeting, the parties reached arrangements to continue a practice-oriented dialogue on the issue, engaging representative of private corporations, compliance-offices, Russian and American authorities in order to identify avenues for finding common decisions and approximating approaches in this filed.

As Andrey Yunak pointed out, “such events have positive impact towards better understanding of the positions of the two countries on enforcement of U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and observing Russian antimonopoly law by foreign companies conducting economic operations in Russia”.

Reference:

The Centre for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance (CFBE) was founded in St Petersburg by a group of the leading Russian human rights activists, an American management consulting company - Sovereign Ventures Inc., “Bronzovy Lev” of Russia, and a non-commercial organization Ethics Resource Center, of the USA. Following a request of the St Petersburg Government, CFBE devised a “Fair Business Declaration” – a contract designed to form an ethical basis of relationship between the state and private sectors. The Declaration is signed by more than 140 firms that have voluntarily undertaken an obligation to reject corruptive practices and put the Code of Ethics into service.

Over the period of its work, CFBE has been paving the way for enhancing the role of civil society in Russia in the market economy. CFBE works in close contact with Russian authorities at the federal and local levels, as well as non-governmental organizations, research institutes and business associations, to draft new laws and codes and form new organizations. CFBE assists in establishing Russian Corporate Governance Code - the first national agreement of Russian-speaking leadership on how companies can implement business-ethics programmes and the newest practices on compliance with anti-corruption law. CFBE also facilitated establishing other non-governmental organizations, helping Transparency International and the National Council on Corporate Governance to start their work in Russia. In 2010 CFBE opened a representative office in Moscow and launched a new programme aimed at unifying efforts of business and society towards implementing Russian National Ant-Corruption Plan.