“If the state plays by the rules, then business will not bluff”
According to the international organization “Transparency International”, in 2021 Kazakhstan worsened its already not at all rosy position, losing 8 positions at once. As a result, the country ranked 102nd among 180 countries/territories of the world. The score of the Republic of Kazakhstan was only 37 out of 100, despite the fact that even the average score for countries is much higher (43 points). This suggests that there is a high level of corruption in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the situation is getting worse.
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According to the Anti-Corruption Agency, more than 6 thousand subjects of the country’s quasi-public and private sectors have implemented compliance services. This was reported at the National Conference “Improving Business Integrity in the Business Sector of Kazakhstan”, which was held in Nur-Sultan. Opening the event, the Chairman of the Chamber of Legal Advisers Yelyubaev Zhumageldy noted that corruption is the most serious threat to national security.
Over the past 5 years, Kazakhstan has been actively implementing a compliance service in the quasi-public and private sectors. The purpose of this service is to conduct international law compliance checks, monitoring and analysis. During the event, acting Tatyana Zinovich, director of the Legal Policy Research Center, emphasized that in many cases compliance services work formally.
“We see that anti-corruption programs and policies have been adopted, but we do not see the work of anti-corruption compliance services – training, risk assessment, employee surveys, monitoring, managing conflicts of interest and protecting employees, which disclose information about corruption within the organization. Also, the Managers do not show their leadership qualities and provide little or no visible support in the implementation of measures to prevent corruption in the organization. According to her, the work of anti-corruption compliance services improves after cases of corruption or public criticism, or after audit reports. “That is, the facts of corruption are a driver for the work of compliance services. This is understandable, but this is the wrong vector, since the job of compliance is to prevent just the same cases of corruption. And this is possible only with systematic and regular work,” added Tatyana Zinovich.
In his speech, Batyrzhan Ashitov, Deputy Director of the Department of Legal Protection of Entrepreneurs of NCE Atameken, shared the results of the annual sociological survey in the business sector. According to him, in 55% of cases, a state representative initiates corruption, which is higher than in 2019 and 2020, and an entrepreneur in 20% of cases, which is an order of magnitude lower than in the past two years.
“Entrepreneurs are one of the segments of our society where all the events and trends that take place have an impact on business. If an official breaks the law, then he necessarily draws a businessman into this process. Entrepreneurs are directly dependent on their main partner – the state. If the state plays by the rules, then business will not bluff!” Batyrzhan Ashitov noted.
The conference also discussed proposals for improving legislation on anti-corruption compliance and prospects for the development of the compliance function in the business sector. The conference was organized by the Legal Policy Research Center Public Foundation and the Kaz Bar Association Chamber of Legal Advisers in cooperation with the Compliance and Business Ethics Association.