Anti-corruption policies and measures of the Fortune Global 500

• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

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18 September 2009This compendium, compiled by UNODC and PricewaterhouseCoopers, looks at what companies in the Fortune 500 Global Index (2008) are doing to fight corruption. It highlights a range of measures, and different approaches.

While there is no one-size-fits-all, businesses should not go below international standards contained in the United Nations Convention against Corruption. For example, a facilitation payment is simply another term for a bribe, yet some companies allow them up to certain threshold or under certain circumstances - or even consider them tax deductible. Some companies provide whistleblowers full anonymity, others promise that such employees will not be exposed to retaliation. Greater harmonization is needed, in line with international standards, to protect businesses and their employees against corruption.

Having collected existing practices, the next step is to highlight good practices and have them widely applied. That means that leaders and managers must set the tone from the top by enforcing a zero-tolerance policy, and checks and balances must be put in place to strengthen integrity and minimize wrong-doing.

The Third session of the Conference of the States Parties to the UN anti-corruption Convention, to be held in Doha in November 2009 , is a golden opportunity to strengthen corporate responsibility in line with the world's only universal anti-corruption instrument.

The private sector has a lot to lose from corruption, and has considerable leverage to stop it. Based on the experience collected in this report, companies should be in a better position to do their part to say "NO" to corruption.