ICC is committed to an efficiently functioning global economy characterized by free and fair competition. Corruption threatens the integrity of markets, undermines fair competition, distorts resource allocation, destroys public trust and undermines the rule of law.
For decades, ICC has taken the lead in denouncing corruption and in developing measures to combat it. When business transactions are affected by the payment of bribes, they are not transparent and disrupt a sound competitive environment.
ICC encourages self-regulation by business in confronting issues of extortion and bribery, and to provide business input into international initiatives to fight corruption.
The risk of corruption faced by businesses varies according to a number of parameters, including their size, their international exposure, and the nature, scale and diversity of their activities.
More remains to be done for SMEs in particular, who are especially vulnerable and often lacking in resources to fully comply with anti-corruption requirements.
Fighting corruption within the private sector, among both MNEs and SMEs, is a progressive and incremental process. It requires strong commitment from top management. And it requires high-quality and systematic organization to ensure that anti-corruption efforts become an integral part of the corporate culture, at all levels.
A thorough and pragmatic implementation of ethics and anti-corruption standards within companies is needed. This entails a great deal of integrity awareness-raising in the private sector and all other sectors of society.
As the first business organization to publish anti-corruption rules remains at the forefront of the development of ethics, anti-corruption and corporate responsibility advocacy codes and guidelines.
We work to define key anti-corruption priorities for policymakers and the global business community. Our range suite of anti-corruption tools, focused on private sector anti-corruption training and self-regulation, concretely responds to global goals and efforts by G20 leaders to move from words to accelerated action to eliminate this scourge on lives and livelihoods the world over.
