Practical prevention of private sector

corruption

The use of whistle-blowing mechanisms

Asso Prii, Member of the Board of Transparency International Estonia, attorney at Supremia
Attorneys at Law
Erkka Jaakkola, Chairman of the Board, Transparency International Estonia, Senior Compliance
Officer at financial institution
 The Aim
• Understanding the corruption prevention in (business)
organization with an emphasis on whistleblowing
systems
• Active exchange of ideas, views and visions
 Corruption prevention in business
• Why are you here?
• Why should a company be concerned about
corruption risks?
• What are those risks?
• What can be done to tackle them?
 Corruption prevention in business
• The trends are shifting
• There is no right or wrong approach - the measures
are just enough or insufficient or overkilling
• Risk based approach: analyse, plan, set up,
communicate, monitor, and communicate.
 Value chain
1. Identification
of risk

4. Monitoring 2. Choosing
and improving mitigation
effectiveness actions

3.
Implementing
mitigation
actions
 Whistleblowing
• What is whistleblowing?
- Corporate openness
- Disclosure of any wrongdoing in organization

• Benefits for the organization

 System
Open, confidential vs anonymous whistleblowing
• How would you prefer to receive/provide information
about wrongdoings in the company?

System – internal or external

• What would you think are the benefits of internal
system - external system?
 Whistleblowing
Preconditions for effective system
What would you think are the preconditions for effective system?
• organizational culture
• policies and accessible reporting tool
• communication and training
• handling the reports/resolution
• feedback
• protection of whistleblowers
 Protection of whistleblowers
• What risks do whistleblowers have?
- treatment of personal data
- conflict of interest within the WB system
- organizational culture
- workplace harassment/termination of employment
• How to mitigate those risks?
 Q-s
• Why set up the system?
• Why not? What are the pros and cons?
• What are the alternatives?
 Case

X is an employee of Estonian branch of multinational

company. According to the internal regulations he
should always inform his manager when witnessing
some misconduct at work. X informs an environmental
organization about breaching of laws at his workplace.
X is dismissed.
Thank you!