Contemporary anti-corruption work has moved on from the old model defined by the public-sector directives and towards a new system of public-private collaboration. Our guest Viviane Schiavi sits at this critical intersection in her work with CIPE’s valuable partner, the International Chamber of Commerce. Listen along as she shares first-hand knowledge of the present and future state of anti-corruption work with CIPE’s own Frank Brown and Anna Kompanek on this week’s Democracy that Delivers.
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Viviane Schiavi is the Global Policy Lead, Anti-Corruption and Corporate Responsibility at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). She oversees ICC’s program in this area, which is based on the development of capacity building tools for companies and policy advocacy vis-a-vis the UN, the OECD, the G20 and other fora. The ICC Commission on Anti-Corruption and Corporate Responsibility that Viviane manages brings together over 400 companies worldwide engaged on integrity, anti-corruption, and supply chain responsibility. Viviane is an attorney and member of the New York Bar, American of French and Argentine origin, with over 20 years’ experience in international commercial law practice and global policy. She is a graduate of Bard College and the City University of New York Law School. Before joining ICC, Viviane practiced international commercial law in New York City and in Paris with Arthur Andersen International (now Accenture). Some of her recent work is linked below.
Guidance on Responsible Business in Challenging Contexts
Resisting Extortion and Solicitation in International Transactions (RESIST)
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Transcript
Announcer (00:02):
The Democracy that Delivers podcast is brought to you today by the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center at CIPE. This is the podcast where we talk about corruption in its many forms. And now to your host.
Frank Brown (00:17):
Hello everybody. My name is Frank Brown and I’m here to welcome you to the CIPE Democracy that Delivers podcast today, brought to you by the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center here at CIPE, the Center for International Private Enterprise. We are very, very pleased today to have a special guest joining us from Paris, Viviane Schiavi. And she heads up the Anti-Corruption and Corporate Responsibility section of the International Chamber of Commerce. And she’ll be talking to us a little bit about some new knowledge products that her organization has put out. Give us a bit of background about the work she does, and we’ll be looking towards the future of the role of the ICC, the International Chamber of Commerce as well. By way of background, Viviane Schiavi is the global policy lead for the Anti-Corruption and Corporate Responsibility section at the International Chamber of Commerce, the ICC.
(01:12):
She oversees ICC’s program in this area, which is based on the development of capacity-building tools for companies and policy advocacy vis-a-vis the UN, the OECD, the G-20 and other fora. The ICC commission on Anti-Corruption and Corporate Responsibility that Viviane manages, brings together over 400 companies worldwide. And those companies are engaged in integrity, anti-corruption and supply chain responsibility. Viviane is an attorney and member of the New York bar with over 20 years experience in international commercial law practice and global policy. She’s a graduate of Bard College and the City University of New York Law School. Before joining ICC, Viviane practiced International Commercial Law in New York City and in Paris. Welcome, Viviane.
Viviane Schiavi (02:01):
Thank you, Frank. Glad to be here
Frank Brown (02:03):
And I’m very, very pleased that as my co-host we’re joined today by Anna Kompanek, the Director for Global Programs at the Center for International Private Enterprise or CIPE. And Anna by way of background, she heads up the unit at CIPE that incubated and supported and nurtured what became the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center, which is what I head up at CIPE. So this is a really good fit as far as co-hosts go. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Anna for the first question.
Anna Kompanek (02:32):
Thank you very much, Frank. And Viviane, great to have you on the podcast. So CIPE and the International Chamber of Commerce are no strangers or two organizations have known each other and collaborated in many ways over the years, including collaboration on the World Chambers Congress or the resource we jointly created on anti-corruption compliance principles for chambers and associations. So it’s wonderful to reconnect with you. But for audiences who may not be as familiar, could you tell us big picture, what is the International Chamber of Commerce?
Viviane Schiavi (03:09):
Thanks, Anna. And thank you to CIPE for giving me this opportunity today. ICC is the International Chamber of Commerce, is the institutional representative of 45 million companies in over 170 countries. Our main aim is to facilitate trade worldwide and to ensure the voice of businesses large and small are heard. The way we facilitate trade is in many ways, we offer services for dispute resolution. ICC’s International Court of Arbitration is one of the foremost in the world. We also offer another suite of tools for dispute resolution services, including mediation, appointment of experts. We also engage representing businesses with regard to governments. So this work is housed within our ICC policy department. So there we both do advocacy with regard to governments and we also develop rules to facilitate trade. The INCO terms are widely known terms for contracts. The UCP 600, I think it is now, are documentary credit rules.
(04:24):
And ICC’s integrity rules that I’ll get into later are actually also a way to facilitate trade and to level the playing field for trade. ICC has four or five, I think, strategic objectives to tackle trade frictions, to promote access to justice and the rule of law, which is where our anti-corruption works sits very squarely and the DRS and arbitration work, to accelerate trade digitalization, to enable climate action and to enhance multilateralism. So basically we like to say that we try to facilitate business and trade every day and everywhere.
Frank Brown (05:13):
So Viviane, that’s fantastic context to give us a sense of the breadth and depth of the ICC’s work. And those are huge numbers you’re talking about. I wanted to zero in a little bit on the actual anti-corruption work that you do at the ICC and your practice specifically. And get a sense what the relevance is to the everyday operations of companies and how you may serve as a bridge to those enforcement agencies and all those different government entities around the world that are preoccupied with anti-corruption work.
Viviane Schiavi (05:44):
No, happy to get into that. Basically ICC’s work on anti-corruption is in capacity building and guidance to tools and how to do business with integrity. How to do it in a way that is not only compliant, but sometimes even beyond the requirements of the law. So just to back up a bit, to mention that ICC was a pioneer in the area of business integrity. We first issued our rules on anti-corruption in the ’70s to help companies comply with the FCPA. The ICC anti-corruption rules are the cornerstone of our role and work in anti-corruption. But we’ve since developed a whole suite of anti-corruption tools that are actually free online at ICCWBO. And that are based on a principle of self-regulation and that are actually most widely used by SMEs. They’re very kind of plug and play concrete, practical developed by business for business. These aren’t long articles.
(06:55):
And in addition to the ICC anti-corruption rules, we have the ICC anti-corruption clause, which is a simple clause to be included in private contract whereby the parties commit to complying with the anti-corruption rules or to putting in place a compliance program. So we also have a whole suite of tools. In addition to that, we have the ICC guidance on responsible business and challenging contexts, which we just issued in August to advise businesses how to do business responsibly in a crisis and other challenging contexts. We have issued ICC updated guidelines on whistleblowing, which are a key integrity tool of course. ICC guidelines on conflicts of interest, on gifts and hospitality. And as well as RESIST, which is an anti-solicitation tool that we developed. A multi-stakeholder action with the World Economic Forum, UN Global Compact and Transparency International, how to resist to an attempt to solicitation and extortion and ideally keep the business if possible.
(08:13):
So your question was also broader in terms of linkages with government regulations and so forth. And ICC in these advancing self-regulation obviously always recognizes the preeminence of laws and regulations. And the idea is that businesses drive their integrity with their codes and guidelines in the context of national or intergovernmental standards. So we see these actually as mutually complementary. Often ICC’s guides and tools help companies comply with these standards because if they’re doing the right thing and A, B, C, then they are going to be compliant.
Frank Brown (09:01):
And quick follow up question for you, Viviane, are there instances when the ICC would advocate on an anti-corruption issue? So let me give you a couple of examples I’m thinking about. So for example, in our experience and at CIPE, one of our principal areas of focus is working to elevate the voices of SMEs because often they just don’t have a platform. So would there be an instance when the ICC might advocate that SME concerns, which are often quite different from the big companies, be considered as laws that are formulated and implemented? Is that sort of in your wheelhouse?
Viviane Schiavi (09:40):
Yes and no. We do it just in developing guides specifically for SMEs. In our constituency and all the companies that we represent, they’re mostly SMEs. We’re all over the world. Any country that has a private sector, we have a national committee in that country. So we are really globally representative and we are very mindful of our role as champions of business worldwide and notably SMEs, because they in a way need us the most. We’re not going to necessarily knock on a government door and say we’re representing SMEs because we represent all our businesses. But for example, ICC developed the SME due diligence guide for anti-Corruption, and that targets SMEs. A lot of the multinationals, they’re so well resourced. They have humongous compliance departments. So to answer you, what I do want to mention is we do have a community that we’ve grown within ICC that it’s like a working group or an entity just to represent SMEs. And we represent them, we feed them into our consultative work and we do sometimes represent them vis-a-vis other processes.
Anna Kompanek (11:05):
Great. And if I can jump in, so you already touched on a number of very important aspects of the International Chamber of Commerce’s work. First of all, global. Second of all, inclusive and expansive when it comes to the types of businesses that you represent or the types of needs and concerns that you address. I would like to dwell on that a little bit more and talk about the importance of your work to the broader anti-corruption community, especially in what we call outside emerging frontier markets. So those are the types of countries where we typically work, primarily non-OECD countries where when it comes to anti-corruption concerns or many other business risks, if we look for global value chains, those are the places where those risks are the highest. So could you talk a little bit more about the significance of your work specifically in those emerging frontier markets and any additional resources that you may want to highlight?
Viviane Schiavi (12:07):
Thank you for that question, Anna. So not surprisingly, we actually have in a way the most engagement and demand from companies in emerging markets because they’re often, and especially SMEs, maybe more vulnerable to risks of either integrity risks or sort of gray zones and so forth. And they look to us for guidance to how to do business responsibly. And also quite frankly, not just to do the right thing, but to keep the business because they’re vulnerable, they need the business. They’re often smaller entities in the supply chains of bigger companies. And the bigger companies require them to be compliant because of laws and regulations that have extraterritorial application. In other words, the bigger companies are going to tell the smaller companies in the supply chains, sometimes in high-risk markets, you’ve got to do X, Y, or Z, or else we’re not doing business with you because they can’t afford the risk.
(13:15):
So these companies that, again, we represent throughout the world, our tools are translated in dozens of languages. They come to us to kind of know how to do the right thing. So it could be either the anti-corruption rules, the supply chain due diligence. Even the guidance is in the gray areas, I like to call them such, gifts and hospitality and conflicts of interest. These provide them guidance to not just be compliant, but to stay in these global supply chains. There’s as you know a new EU legislation on due diligence and labor supply chains. And sometimes you’re talking about really small companies and countries that are this applicable to them. So these are the kind of tools that help keep them in the supply chain. Another thing we have, and thanks to our global network of national committees, is that they themselves in their countries they have mirror commissions that follow what we do but often adapt them to their context.
(14:24):
And for example, in Brazil, there’s a very effective integrity certification program for SMEs, where the more global companies in the country are partnering with that as a way to support basically the businesses in their country and keep the smaller businesses viable. In Mexico there’s a strong integrity program in partnership with a local university, which is also certifying and training smaller companies so that they can stay in the global supply chains and keep the business. So those are examples of what we do. And also the guidance on responsible business and challenging contexts addresses sensitive contexts, and I’ll get into that next, but that are often in high-risk emerging markets.
Anna Kompanek (15:18):
Great. Thank you so much, Viviane, for those examples. And I think you emphasized a very important aspect of your work that is very much demand-driven, very much rooted in local needs and approaches. In other words, it’s not you from Paris necessarily coming up with the rules, but really using local knowledge and local needs and local concerns to create the resources and guidance for businesses worldwide. Can you tell us a little bit more about the resource you just mentioned, guidance and responsible business and challenging contexts? Arguably, more and more context, country context out there are becoming challenging. So that is definitely one resource that is very timely and demand-driven. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?
Viviane Schiavi (16:06):
Yes, thanks for that question, Anna. So this is the ICC guidance on responsible business and challenging contexts. So again, if you just go into ICCWBO, the World Business Organization, you’ll find it all online free. We just issued this in August. So this basically came to us out of challenges that some companies were facing with the Russian-Ukraine conflict. And so we developed this guidance with the support of consultants. And I should say the methodology was very rigorous because we did confidential interviews with a number of companies facing challenges in different contexts. So different contexts in the world, in-country conflict, two-country conflict. Sometimes it was more an issue of a human rights of certain ethnicities in a country.
(17:03):
And based on those interviews and also based each time also with interviews with civil society and that country, which are as a necessary voice, we developed this guidance which basically guides countries in a situation of conflict, how do you address situations of basically do you stay or do you go? That’s one of the issues. Sometimes one would think just leave and maybe for the optics that would be better. Sometimes there are employees that are very dependent on jobs and they don’t have necessarily anything to do with the governments that are creating issues. So the prism of this guidance goes actually beyond anti-corruption and takes on a lot of the guidance of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. And so it’s a new area that we’re issuing guidance on, but it really seemed necessary. And to give a framework for companies to evaluate these really tricky situations in terms of the different factors to take into account. So this can be an armed conflict, a gross human rights violation, the imposition of trade sanctions, a coup d’etat, sometimes a mix of all of these.
(18:36):
And often a company’s under immediate pressure to do something right away. And what we do with this guidance is give them a sort of checklist of things to look at. A priority is, for example, ensuring the safety of its workforce, top priority. Okay, avoid rushing into a decision under pressure of scrutiny, respecting the human rights of all affected stakeholders. So including employees and the impacted communities, even if it’s not just the employees. Using leverage, sometimes if the company stays they have more leverage than if they leave. And if they have to leave, who do they give their business to? Identifying more… How can I say, human rights, respectful entities on the ground that could carry the business forward. So it’s basically a checklist for these types of situations that we’ve developed.
Frank Brown (19:37):
So Viviane, if you don’t mind, I had a quick follow up question. So I’m assuming that the ICC represents businesses that are on both sides of conflicts. And that’s one of the really interesting and impressive dimensions of the ICC, is the breadth of your membership. And I’m wondering how do you navigate a situation like that when you have combatant countries, businesses on both sides, issues may be the same for different reasons. You have lots of inputs into the guidance you just released. How do you navigate that?
Viviane Schiavi (20:06):
We hear all sides. We have a sort of baseline approach, which is always endeavoring to be neutral. We are an international organization. We are not meant to take sides. We often have sort of a trade focus. And in terms of this type of guidance because there’s all parts of the house, we’re not going to get caught into a two-country conflict. And if there’s any aim to try to get us in that situation, we will not be there because that’s not our role. On these guidances we develop, we hear different sides but we always stick to our own basic principles. That is to advance integrity and the rule of law. So we’re not going to be hijacked by a self-interested side. We know how that… We’re not going to go there and we’ll just develop principles that can be applied in different areas. So I don’t want to sound like I’m tiptoeing around. I’ve honestly been at ICC a long time and I’ve never found myself in an intractable situation.
Frank Brown (21:12):
Interesting. I would note that at CIPE, this is in Sudan, but we launched an ambitious effort called Business for Peace earlier this year with a big conference in Addis Ababa given the war going on in Sudan. And some of the principles of that approach touch on what you’re talking about, Viviane, is looking for the common elements, whether it’s trade, commerce, whatever it is. But the common elements that the business community finds as a potential platform for peace building. So thank you.
Viviane Schiavi (21:42):
And thank you for that comment, Frank, because I did want to mention that when we were first founded ICC after the first World War, we called ourselves Merchants for Peace or of peace. We basically saw how fostering lines of a trade and commerce between nations is one way to preserve common tenets of decency. And also promoting integrity in the private sector is also a way to help promote peace. And obviously there are areas of conflict, but it is a lever among others and we try to see it more as a positive lever.
Frank Brown (22:20):
So I had one last question on my side, which has to do with the role overall of the private sector in fighting corruption. And that’s a huge broad question, but I wanted to narrow it down a little bit and focus on what you’ve been describing as your interest and thrust regarding SMEs. And at CIPE, one of the things that we notice when we’re working with SMEs on anti-corruption issues is that there’s a point at which SMEs, especially in highly corrupt environments, they have to take substantial risk if they’re going to go from a business model that includes giving bribes to obtain licenses and permits and taking care of inspectors, and all the things they need to do to operate a business in a highly corrupt environment. And as they make the transition from that stage of their development to going clean, putting in place compliance programs, backing away from that highly corrupt culture, that’s very, very risky for them as a business and sometimes physically for the entrepreneurs themselves like threats and that sort of thing.
(23:28):
And one of the things that we’ve observed, and my guess is that you do a substantial amount of work, is that in that moment if SMEs can work collectively and have a collective voice, it gives them some cover. And they can move the needle and begin to change the overall business-enabling environment in a way that they can’t as individual businesses. And I’m wondering if you could just talk a little bit about your experience, which is I think more substantial than mine at least, in that space and what you’ve observed over the years.
Viviane Schiavi (23:57):
Thanks for that, Frank. And that’s a good question. And again, I should note that SMEs make up an important part of our constituency, but we represent companies of all sizes. And they often do like to work with us in our… We have a global anti-corruption commission, I should mention, that has about 400 company members around the world. And they join us and work together often because they do have dilemmas and scenarios they face in the field, and they are looking for peer learning and capacity building. I should mention that I have been for a while at ICC in this role and the landscape has been evolving. Even 10, 15 years ago, it was a much different landscape, the private sector were the bad guys and all the problems with them. And now we’re really getting to a space where the private sector is and is seen to be as more of a driver for integrity.
(25:00):
But I should say that especially when I was first out, people would come to us and join the commission. And even then, Chatham has rules. Even in the space of our confines and there wasn’t virtual meetings and it was all physical and in person, very, very cagey and not wanting to be named. But then they would bring out all the challenges and issues in our meetings because they wanted to learn. And sometimes there were sectoral initiatives. RESIST was built on in the field, real life cases that companies brought to us. And it took a little bit of doing finally to convince the companies to be named as contributors at the start.
(25:48):
But they did end up being named because obviously… And people sometimes didn’t even want to get involved because if they were seen to be involved with ICC’s anti-corruption it’s like, oh, well, something’s going on there. But now the narrative is evolving and it continues to be a space not just for pure learning but also for collective action, multi-stakeholder action. And our next biannual commission meeting next week, we have the UN Global Compact, we have the World Economic Forum. We don’t want to duplicate, we don’t want to compete. We want to promote synergies between us. So we’re connecting between us, but we’re also connecting companies with different initiatives. Yeah, so I do think that that’s something that ICC can bring. We sometimes also welcome companies that have had a very well-known major integrity issue, and they’re in good faith. They just want to learn how to do better, and we welcome all companies that are constructively looking to improve the game. So I hope that answers your question.
Anna Kompanek (26:56):
Great. Thank you so much. And you already started talking a little bit about what’s next or future plans for your work. Do you see any new issues on the horizon? Do you have plans for perhaps new resources or new lines of engagement?
Viviane Schiavi (27:11):
Thanks for that question. Well, I’ll tell you the next piece of work on the agenda is to revise, update our ICC anti-corruption clause. So this obviously works hand-in-hand with their rules because it’s a clause whereby the parties commit to complying with the rules. Interestingly, the clause is actually increasingly being used by governments in procurement contracts, including for example, the government of North Macedonia, the government of the state of Jalisco, just to level the playing field. And so we’re updating them to keep up with current practices. We’re always keen on updating our rules, anti-corruption rules have been updated about five times, including last year. And so that’s next on the work plan ahead of us. And also just deploying our ICC guidance on responsible business and challenging contexts, which tragically remains more relevant than ever. And again, goes beyond anti-corruption. But anti-corruption is obviously a part of that guidance.
Frank Brown (28:22):
That’s super. And that’s a great way to wrap up the podcast with a bit of a sense of what’s coming up on your agenda. So I wanted to remind listeners that we’ve been talking with Viviane Schiavi, the global policy lead for Anti-Corruption and Corporate responsibility at the International Chamber of Commerce, the ICC. My co-host has been Anna Kompanek, the Director for Global Programs here at CIPE, the Center for International Private Enterprise. My name is Frank Brown, I head up the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center at CIPE. And it’s been a real pleasure, Viviane, having you with us today. You’ve opened lots of doors. I think people will be visiting your website looking for more information. And if nothing else, have a much better sense of the ICC’s crucial role in supporting the fight against corruption globally. Viviane, thank you. Anna, thank you.
Anna Kompanek (29:10):
Thank you so much.
Viviane Schiavi (29:11):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Announcer (29:14):
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Published Date: October 15, 2024