The G20 meeting in Brisbane of course concluded over the weekend. During the meeting the leaders of the world’s leading economies discussed a range of issues including those relating to the business obligations of companies. Allens Partner and Head of the UN Global Compact Australia’s Anit-Corruption Leadership Group, Rachel Nicholson joins us to discuss the outcome of these talks.

Thank you.

Now Rachel the B20 made many recommendations in the lead up to the G20 regarding anti-corruption, which recommendations did the G20 make in regards to anti-corruption?

Yes it did. The B20 Australia Summit was held in July this year and anti-corruption was a real hot topic. The B20 had taken the smart step of embedding its anti-corruption across each of its policy task forces so the recommendations made were quite broad and most of those in fact were picked up by the G20. As some examples the G20 agreed that its states should work to increase transparency of ownership and control across companies so that there was understanding of where improper benefits flow across borders within corporate groups, that’s a really significant development. Another one was that states should incentivise companies to engage in strong compliance activity around anti-bribery and also incentivise them to self report where actual incidences have been identified and that would be a really positive development, particularly here in Australia.

Rachel were there any other recommendations to come from the G20 around the issue of companies conducting business globally?

One of the clear recommendations coming out of the G20 was a strong focus on enforcement of anti-corruption laws. It’s very clear that the G20 was saying that states need to pull out all stops to ensure that their anti-corruption laws are enforced domestically and also where appropriate extra territorially so to create that web of potential liability to prevent this egregious conduct.

So what happens now to the recommendations made by the G20?

These recommendations will be further considered by the G20 anti-corruption working group, that group has made clear that it will set an anti-corruption agenda that puts more detail around these recommendations so that they are increasingly in a form for implementation either by relevant international bodies or at the state level.

So Rachel what does all this mean for business in Australia?

What it means for business in Australia is that clearly enforcement is going to be – going to continue to be a real priority of our enforcement authorities, the Australian Federal Police, DEFAT, Attorney-General’s Department and ASIC. But also hopefully these enforcement authorities will be looking at ways to encourage increased compliance by business and to incentivise self reporting and this would be a real step forward because at the moment there is certainly some uncertainty for business in this space.

Well Rachel thank you for talking us through all the recommendations.

Thank you.

That was Rachel Nicolson, who is a Partner at Allens and also Head of the UN Global Compact Australia’s Anti-Corruption Leadership Group. Listeners if you have any questions of course you can send them through using the panel on your screen or via email to law@brrmedia.com.

Company (Stock code)	Date/time	Event
Allens (8AAR)	Tue, 18 Nov 2014 09:30 am (UK time)	G20 makes anti-bribery recommendations
Allens (8AAR)	Mon, 27 Oct 2014 06:00 am (UK time)	WA introduces harmonised WHS Bill with high fines
Allens (8AAR)	Thu, 16 Oct 2014 06:45 am (UK time)	High Court rules on adverse action case
Allens (8AAR)	Tue, 14 Oct 2014 05:30 am (UK time)	Developments in the IPO market