FCPAméricas Blog
“Bad Press is the Worst Sanction”
3.09.2012
In Latin America, a company’s reputation matters. At least that is what a recent survey concluded after gauging factors that motivate businesses to counter corruption.
The survey, conducted by Germany’s Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, reached out to business people, government officials, and civil society workers throughout the world to assess how incentives and sanctions affect a company’s willingness to take seriously ethical behavior.
Reputation Matters. In Latin America, more people than in any other region (almost two out of every five respondents) rated reputational considerations as the most important factor to motivate businesses to counter corruption. In contrast, respondents in North America, on average, rated other factors like imprisonment, debarment, and revocation of business licenses to be most important. In the Middle East and Africa, only 22% rated reputational considerations to be most important.
What about peer pressur... Read more
Poor Regulatory Quality — A Corruption Red Flag?
3.07.2012
Indicators show that, compared to other regions of the world, Latin American countries generally have poor regulatory regimes. The World Bank Doing Business 2012 report ranks Latin American countries, on average, in the bottom half worldwide for regulatory quality. That reports compares 183 economies by measuring the clarity, predictability, and efficiency of regulations that apply to areas like construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, and paying taxes.
In my own experiences in the region, I have often encountered regulatory regimes that are vague, that overlap, or that are enforced by multiple government agencies.
What does poor regulatory quality have to do with corruption risk? The link is clear. The more uncertainty there is in the law, the more opportunity there is for corruption. Vagueness and complexity create the potential for discretion by authorities. Discretion, in turn, creates opportunity for manipulation which can form the basis of corruption.
In addition, the more government actors that are involved in a regulatory issue, the more potential places where brib... Read more
An FCPAméricas Status Update
3.02.2012
Tomorrow marks the five-month anniversary of the launch of the FCPAméricas Blog. Remember the first post on October 3, 2011? Is the FCPA Working? Three Dispatches from Latin America.
Now, almost 40 blog posts in, I am taking stock. The following are a few things I have learned so far, and some thoughts about potential new directions.
Is anybody out there? Legal bloggers sometimes feel as if they write in a vacuum, a feeling confirmed by a recent survey by Insi... Read more
