CLOSING • A roundup of legal department news and trends RBC bans facilitation payments
When it comes to trying to avoid getting caught up in the pro- liferation of anti-corruption legislation worldwide, the Royal Bank of Canada is opting to follow the U.K. Bribery Act and embedding it as part of its global anti- money-laundering process. "When the U.K. Bribery Act came out
we decided to migrate to the highest com- mon standard," said Thomas Smee, senior vice president and deputy general coun- sel, RBC Financial Group speaking on a panel on Canadian securities regulations at the Association of Corporate Counsel annual meeting in Denver. "My approach is to go across all of the legislation and go
Thomas Smee, senior vice president and deputy general counsel, RBC Financial Group.
to the highest common standard." RBC does business in about 50 dif-
ferent countries in different ways around the world and when the U.K. Bribery Act came out, Smee said the bank decided to find the most onerous piece of legislation and follow it's recommendations. "We now ban facilitation payments
globally — it's a good example of how you have to surf the world for the most onerous thing and then adopt that as the standard," said Smee. "You have to assess the risk of corruption across your orga- nization and the type of risks you might encounter." Smee explained that the U.K. Brib-
ery Act has a compliance defence. If you had a tough compliance policy and were following it, when the company, which might otherwise be blameless, is caught in an act committed by an isolated employee it can demonstrate that steps were taken to try to prevent anything from happening. "It starts at the board level, senior
management, approval of policies, esca- lating reporting hotlines, and then you assess the risk of corruption across your businesses in terms of the type of busi- ness and where you're doing business," said Smee. "It takes a huge amount of time and
attention if you do have a large amount of international business, but you just can't afford to get caught up in it. My general theme is to say, 'What can we do so this doesn't happen?' Or, if it does happen we can say we did everything possible to make sure it didn't happen." IH
46 • DECEMBER 2011/JANUARY 2012 INHOUSE
