"No science is immune to the infection
of politics and the corruption of power."

Jacob Bronowski
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Instructions for Entrepreneurs for Managing Risks of Corruption

  1. In order to raise the awareness of the supervisory board of the company and the members of the management board of the conflict of interests and preventing corruption, they will pass the e-course on corruption targeted at (public) companies.
  2. In order to raise the awareness of the managers and other employees of the companies on the conflict of interests and the prevention of corruption, periodic training sessions of corruption/ethics/conflict of interests and discussion of emerging cases are carried out. Based on these, it is possible to prove written operational instructions, while also taking into account the company’s geographic scope (e.g. operating in countries with high corruption level). The instructions for preventing corruption and avoiding conflict of interests in companies are approved by the council. Also, try a case-by-case test “Myth Buster”.
  3. The company assigns an employee who is, inter alia, responsible for advising employees of the company on issues of ethics and conflict of interests, as well as preventing corruption and shaping ethical infrastructure in the company. A separate employee is not required for smaller companies, however, it is possible, for example, to create/connect a compliance verifying position with the duties of an ethics advisor in larger companies. (A compliance officer has a wider scope than an ethics manager, also including, for example, money laundering, competition, and other topics.)
  4. To identify and recognise situations involving the risk of corruption, companies periodically assess corruption risks and map out processes[, which have the highest risk of corruption, and they also provide solutions and prepare the corresponding overview to the supervisory board of the company. To this end, you can use a practical manual on corruption prevention for the private sector. For example, English auxiliary materials can be used for risk assessment. UN Risk Assessment Guidelines. 
  5. To prevent the risk of corruption and identify the conflict of interests in case of specific cases and transactions, the companies inspect possible transactions between the business interests and related persons and make an overview to the supervisory board.
  6. The company participates in the assessment of responsive entrepreneurship in order to be an example in Estonia for the rest of the business sector with a desire to contribute more to society than required by law. (For example, Tallinna Vesi, Eesti Energia, Tallinn Airport are among those state companies who are already successfully participating).
  7. To shape the capacity to tackle bribery, a company with a significant volume of international transactions adopts the ISO 37001 standard on anti-bribery management system that has been published by the International Organisation for Standardisation.
  8. The company prefers such procurement partners, who have declared the principles of honesty, for example, those who have a code of ethics; who have joined the corresponding ISO standard; who have let themselves to be assessed by VEF, etc.