Ruddock On Compliance - Cover Your Behind
Ruddock On Compliance - Cover Your Behind
March 14, 2006: Attorney General, Philip Ruddock, is worried that key compliance information is not being relayed from managers to relevant stakeholders.
Ruddock was speaking to Sky News in the continuing fallout from the Cole inquiry into the Australian Wheat Board, and with reference to the report on corporate standards by the Centre for Australian Ethical Research (CAER). The Attorney General says,"My view in relation to corporate governance arrangements is that every corporation ought to ensure that those who work for it are conscious of their obligations."
His opinions comes as the CAER report claims that half ASX100-listed companies do not have policies in place to deal with bribery of foreign officials. This is obviously key to the Cole inquiry - but also raises issues in relation to wider corporate governance and legal compliances.
The AG is further quoted as saying, "It concerns me from the point of view of officials and directors of firms that, if in terms of their risk management of potential liability, they don't include instructions and advice to their staff, to their boards, they could well be exposed."
Untangling this sentence would lead the objective observer to reason that this the Federal Government is less concerned with transparency and more worried about the exposure of corporate officers to legal liability. Given this attitude, however, the not so revolutionary idea that policy regarding compliance to laws governing fraud and corruption (including bribery of officials) should be passed from directors to staff should still act as a further driver to upgrading systems.
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