Over the past decade, companies around the world have invested signficantly in strengthening their internal controls, ethics, and compliance programmes. This trend has been driven in part by incentives provided by law enforcement authorities, which increasingly consider compliance programmes as a potential mitigating or exonerating factor in cases of foreign bribery or related offences. Public authorities may also consider a company’s compliance efforts when deciding whether to grant public advantages.
However, assessing the effectiveness of corporate anti-corruption efforts remains a challenge for both governments and companies. Understanding how governements can assess these efforts accurately is therefore essential to ensuring that incentives reward companies with effective compliance measures and encourage further investment in this area.
