As part of the International Business Law LLM programme at the Europa Institute of the University of Zürich, the Institute’s compliance specialist, Gemma Aiolfi, also the Institute’s Head of Corporate Governance, Compliance & Collective Action, gave lectures on the topic of Corporate Criminal Law. This course module was offered for the first time in English to law students from around the world.
The course topics covered included corporate criminal liability, compliance and corruption.
The Basel Institute has joined the recently established Swiss National Compliance Roundtable. The aim of the Roundtable is to develop national standards of education and training for persons interested in Compliance with a view to raising and setting standards and qualifications.
A presentation will be made at the end of January 2014 to interested parties in the private sector, government and academia, which will outline the proposals for further work.
At the invitation of the OECD, the Basel Institute on Governance has joined the Advisory Board, which has been established to advise on the OECD’s Thematic Study on Business Integrity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The first meeting was held in Istanbul in October, with all Advisory Board members giving input into the questionnaire, which will form the basis for the first part of this study.
In mid 2014, Ms Gemma Aiofli, Head of Compliance and Corporate Governance was elected board member of Ethics and Compliance Switzerland (ECS). This newly established organisation is the first cross-industry and cross-sectorial association in Switzerland promoting ethical leadership and organizational integrity.
To date the ECS counts 14 organisational and 40 individual members. On 2 October 2014, the Basel Institute will be hosting the ECS’s kick-off meeting to discuss the development of the SME Compliance Tool Kit. The meeting is open for all interested parties.
In mid 2014, Fairtrade International appointed Dr Claudia Baez-Camargo, Head of Public Governance Research at the Basel Institute, as member of Fairtrade International’s Governance Committee.
Fairtrade International is an international non-profit, multi-stakeholder body responsible for the strategic direction for Fairtrade, setting Fairtrade standards and supporting producers. The Governance Committee oversees the governance of the association and its members with a view to making structural and procedural recommendations.
In the context of a series of capacity building workshops by the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) to strengthen governance in Central Africa’s extractive sector, the Basel Institute contributed to a 4-day seminar on good governance in the extractive industries in the Central African Monetary Community (CEMAC), held in Douala, Cameroon, in December 2014.
The ICCA continues to work closely with the Russian Compliance Alliance (RCA), whom it welcomed as its first official member to the B20 Collective Action Hub in late 2014, to promote the RCA’s Collective Action initiative.
The RCA's initiative is based on a non-commercial web-based self-evaluation questionnaire that seeks to create an international anti-corruption compliance standard for emerging economies, analogous to the ISO Quality Standards model.
The Basel Institute supported the 5th International Ethics Summit ‘Understanding Today, Inspiring Tomorrow’, hosted by the Turkish organisation TEID in Istanbul on 17 June 2015.
The conference was dedicated to discussing how concepts such as responsible citizenship, sustainable production, innovation, ethics and reputation can be integrated into a successful company alongside making profits for shareholders.
The ICCA was represented in panel discussions during two Game Changer sessions at the September 2015 edition of the International Anti- Corruption Conference (IACC) in Malaysia.
The first session addressed efforts from the private sector to promote transparency and integrity, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. The High Level Reporting Mechanism experiences in Colombia were highlighted in this regard.
The Basel Institute on Governance and Blomeyer & Sanz have been commissioned by Transparency International (TI) to conduct a Learning Review of Integrity Pacts (IP), a tool used in many countries for preventing corruption in public contracting.