Anti-corruption: Safeguards for the financial sector
After the convention signed in November 2019, the financial regulators have just produced a practical guide for the fight against corruption. This document was developed in partnership between the integrity and anti-corruption entity, Bank Al Maghrib (the central bank), the Moroccan Capital Market Authority (AMMC) and the Supervisory Authority of Insurance and Social Welfare (Acaps).
The guide aims to «expose the basic concepts to demystify the phenomenon and allow the stakeholders of the financial sector to understand the different dimensions».
It also highlights «the key components of an anti-corruption mechanism that can be rolled out within a company operating in the Moroccan financial sector». This is all the more important as the principle of extraterritoriality of anti-corruption laws, adopted by certain countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, promotes the prosecution and conviction of corrupt practices, with fines that have increased considerably in recent years.
■ A unifying document
In detail, the three regulators state that this guide «does not replace existing regulations but aims to facilitate their understanding and implementation». The guide is intended for companies in the financial sector, including credit and payment institutions, as well as the capital market and insurance and social security sector stakeholders.
For its authors, it is a unifying document that defines the principles of an anti-corruption mechanism within the company. The document is based on a series of principles, including zero tolerance of corruption and influence peddling… This policy must be implemented at all levels, reads the document. This includes the members of the senior management, «through leadership and exemplarity, by inspiring to the staff high standards of integrity and ethics and allocating the necessary resources to integrity systems to ensure their proper functioning».
■ Mapping
Companies in the financial sector will have to draw up specific corruption risk maps. They will have to define «the procedures for identifying and dealing with corruption risks that are inherent to the companies’ core business and support activities». The same applies to internal functions and partners that may generate significant corruption risks.
This mapping must be formalized and reviewed regularly, in light of changes in the context, in particular incidents, alerts, new activities, and other events. This must be accompanied by a formalized system for evaluating third-party partners. Three actions are recommended: the performance of reasonable due diligence to assess the degree of exposure to the risk of corruption induced by entering into a business relationship with a partner. Added to this is the deployment of controls adapted to the risk of corruption identified and assessed, as well as the periodic reassessment, at least once a year, of the risk and the associated controls.
M.A.M.
