Congratulations to Nicola Allocca for this well-deserved appointment. We are particularly pleased because we have known Nicola from the beginning of our venture with Risk & Compliance ITALIA and we published his articles about the necessity to eradicating the corruption “cancer” and possible solutions. Legality, NoCorruptionZone, Integrity, Visionary Disobedience are the objectives for which he strives for and the first keywords that come to mind that we associate with his person. This recognition confirms to his valuable and continuous engagement on different levels, not only within his company (AST), but also in the international forum at OECD and in many activities at the university and institutional level.  Continue reading…

by Geert Vermeulen

This article is the first of a series of five articles and will be published in five parts. The second part will be published next week. Often ethics & compliance officers only end up in the news when things have gone wrong. Like in the recent money laundering scandals in the banking industry. In many of these cases, it was actually the management that decided that doing business was more important than being compliant and didn’t invest sufficiently in proper compliance controls and resources. Many people don’t realise that ethics & compliance officers also prevent numerous crimes. Continue reading…

by Branislav Hock

Airbus is yet another company that resolved its corruption out of the court. But buying a good ethical standing is becoming more complex. After all, a time when the US was the only country offering a settlement to a French company has passed. Paying massive bribes in China to sell aircraft interests many countries. Escaping prosecution is newly for sale in other countries as well. And the fact that France, the UK, and US were able to sell Airbus at a £3 billion settlement shows that this is a lucrative business. Continue reading…

In September 2016, Wells Fargo, a bank with its head office in San Francisco, California came under fire for a huge scandal, which involved accusations of fraudulent sales practices. Employees of the bank opened around 3.2 million fake accounts due to the fact that the culture at Wells Fargo put a lot of pressure onto its employees to reach unrealistic sales goals, causing some employees to even break the law. Since the scandal broke out, the bank has relieved about 5,300 employees due to their illegal behavior and has also gotten rid of the extreme sales goals. The bank was also investigated by Federal prosecutors and Congressional overseers and California, Illinois and Chicago have all put their business partnership with the bank on hold since the event. Continue reading…

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) proposes, subject to consultation, to issue a revised version of International Standard on Auditing (UK) (ISA (UK) 315 (Revised June 2016) Identifying and Assessing the Risks of Material Misstatement Through Understanding the Entity and Its Environment, to reflect recent revisions to the international standards on auditing issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB).

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by Michel Klompmaker

The Green Swan is a book written by qualified professionals from the Banque De France and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). It examines the link between the effects of climate change and the stability of the financial sector. It also provides an in-depth survey of how global warming has slowly integrated into macroeconomic models and how they have progressively evolved to form better assessments of stability risks that arise from the phenomenon of climate change. On the other hand, this book also acknowledges the limitations of models and how they may not be able to accurately foresee the financial and economic impact of climate change. Continue reading…

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) launched a review of its monetary policy strategy. The monetary policy strategy was adopted in 1998 and some of its elements were clarified in 2003. Since 2003 the euro area and the world economy have been undergoing profound structural changes. Declining trend growth, on the back of slowing productivity and an ageing population, as well as the legacy of the financial crisis, have driven interest rates down, reducing the scope for the ECB and other central banks to ease monetary policy by conventional instruments in the face of adverse cyclical developments.

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