On 13^th October, 2016 the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce organised for its members the 2^nd Compliance Conference. Artem Sirota and Maria Kolsdorf moderated one of the sessions that was dedicated to the compliance assessment of the contractors in Russia.

During the discussion all panelists agreed that at the moment there are many affordable electronic resources which help to assess your contractor as a company. But things are more complicated when it comes to individuals (in particular, the management and employees of the company) because collection of personal information is limited by the legislation on personal data protection. In this regard, the question was raised of how to minimize the risks for the company, if it hires an organisation that specialises in information collection (for example, detectives). Artem Sirota thinks that companies are responsible not only for their own actions but for the actions of third parties that they hire.

Further debate opened up the question whether the company is obliged to report about suspected offenses of its employees to the state authorities. Participants noted that the law does not prescribe such action as obligation, at the same time it is general duty in accordance with the anti-corruption legislation to assist authorities in gathering information and conducting investigations in doubtful cases. Maria Kolsdorf pointed out that such an obligation may be established by company’s internal documents.

Many other aspects were discussed at the session what brings us to conclusion that compliance systems are of great interest for many contemporary companies but at the same time there are quite a few deficits that should be eliminated as soon as possible.

Last weekend Artem Sirota attended the Mackrell International 2015 EMEA Regional Meeting that took place between 9th and 11th October 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal.  

During the meeting to the bottom line for all MI members lied the wish to focus more on business development. It was decided that MI should spend more resources, human and financial, on business development in order to be even more useful to its members.

Different workshops and discussions regarding business development, opportunities it provides and actions that should be carried out were organized in Lisbon. Even coffee breaks were filled with consistent networking and intensive exchange of ideas.

Next EMEA Regional Meeting will take place in Paris in October, 2016.