Michael Comer & Timothy Stephens – Bribery and Corruption

Michael Comer & Timothy Stephens – Bribery and Corruption

Politicians and regulators do not run businesses. Bribery and Corruption is for managers who do. It will help you transform uncertainties and problems created via legislation and regulations (such as The UK Bribery Act, The Proceeds of Crime Act, The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Sarbanes-Oxley) into opportunities to:

• Maintain entrepreneurial, profitable, and enjoyable working environments while easily surpassing compliance standards
• Control incoming, internal, outgoing, competitive corruption and fraud
• Take decisions in grey areas, confidently

Bribery and Corruption frames control and compliance in an entirely different way: not as a brake on your company’s forward motion but as essential protective equipment enabling you to go faster and further in safety.

Written by the world’s leading practitioners in the fields of fraud prevention, detection and investigation with massive practical experience in both commercial and governmental sectors, Bribery and Corruption exposes the misconceptions, myths and corruption of the word bribery and suggests effective solutions that go well beyond simple compliance. It commits to assertive managerial rather than timorous legal solutions to anti-bribery and other laws. It explains how processes can be tested – using automated fraud detection software – to expose current cases of fraud and corruption or to provide assurance that controls are functioning optimally. It tackles the usually ignored problems of stratospheric, political, academic and media corruption, which often motivate commercial bribery. It exposes the dangers of employee to employee corruption; skulduggery by blue collar workers and lots more.

Over the last 25 years, Mike Comer, occasionally writing with Tim Stephens, has been responsible for some of the most readable and influential books on fraud. Bribery and Corruption is another tour de force, complete, authoritative and yet a great pleasure to read.

Contents:

Foreword: Noble cause corruption

Part I Background on Corruption Laws: A bit of dodgy history; The main conventions; UK and US regulatory agencies.

Part II The Bribery Act 2010 and Friends: objectives and limitations; Main sections of the Bribery Act; Enforcement, penalties and sentencing; Other relevant UK legislation and guidelines; US and worldwide legislation and guidelines.

Part III The Taxonomy of Corruption: Introduction to a universal problem; Sectoral corruption; The mechanics of corruption; Examples of high-risk processes and contexts.

Part IV Risk Assessment: The nature of risk: Management and catalogues; Analysing vulnerable contexts; Analysing secondary risks.

Part V Exposing Corruption: Introduction and background; Critical point auditing; Manual tests.

Part VI Background on Effective Controls: Introduction on the nature of controls; Control tools and misconceptions; The inspiring integrity campaign; Standards, guidelines forms and basic training ; Due diligence, incident reporting and contingency planning and protection of information; Contractual controls and personnel procedures; Accounting procedures, fidelity and other insurance.

Part VII Additional Anti-Bribery Controls: Introduction, principles and policies; Additional anti-corruption strategies; More on high risk aspects; Facilitation payments, gifts and third-party agents; Joint ventures, acquisitions and initial public offerings; Some other problem areas.

Part VIII Internal and Regulatory Investigations: Background and strategy to internal investigations; Key elements and case-handling; Regulatory investigations; Negotiating settlements and going to court; Index.