Fundamentals of Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Compliance in South Africa

Abstract

Corruption is endemic in jurisdictions throughout the world. The financial and reputational risks that follow incidents of corrupt activity within an organisation are considerable. Often they can be quite severe. The financial consequences include not only the loss that an organisation may suffer from corrupt activity, but also the money that needs to be spent investigating these type of incidents as well as that required for any ensuing legal processes. The latter include civil proceedings to recover funds that may have been misappropriated from an organisation as a result of corrupt activity, disciplinary enquiry proceedings against employees involved in such activity, criminal investigations and/or regulatory enforcement processes. In certain jurisdictions, for example, the US and the UK, the penalties that may be imposed on an organisation arising from corrupt activity can be quite severe, running even to hundreds of millions of dollars. The financial consequences of corruption for an organisation include the amount of management time spent dealing with such incidents, which time could have been utilised better in managing the organisation. The cost of this time often is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.