Double-edged anti-corruption pledge

The pledge may embarrass Sime Darby if it fails to explain itself in a (corruption) inquiry, says former MACC Corruption Prevention Panel chairman Ramon Navaratnam.

PETALING JAYA: Sime Darby stands to lose more than it can gain through its corporate integrity pledge with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

Former MACC Corruption Prevention Panel chairman Ramon Navaratnam said that the pledge would force Sime Darby to observe good governance practices.

“The advantage (of the pledge) is that Sime Darby cannot say that they didn’t know about the rules and regulations or standard operating procedures (in business practice), and they’ll have to meet standards.”

“In fact, a pledge may embarrass Sime Darby even more. If it fails to explain itself in a (corruption) inquiry, the pledge can work against them,” Navaratnam told FMT.

He added that if Sime Darby took the pledge seriously, it would have to appoint internal anti-corruption agents of its own.

These agents, he said, would have to work with the MACC and be impartial to no one within their company.

In an effort to strengthen anti-corruption awareness, Sime Darby signed the pledge with the MACC yesterday.

Both parties defended the move as a strike against corruption, and rubbished claims that it was a public relations exercise.

At the time, Sime Darby chief executive officer Bakke Salleh said that the pledge would send a strong message to both employees and the company’s business partners.

Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) president Paul Low said that corporate integrity pledges would put companies’ reputations at stake.


“Foreign investors want to ensure that the companies they are investing in have put in measures of compliance,” he said.

If these measures were broken, Low added, pledged companies would have to pay the price, resulting in a loss of business and investor confidence.

The TI-M president also said that these pledges were actually practised in different parts of the world.
He cited the US Justice Department as one example, adding that it would ask companies to sign good behaviour compliance programmes.

“These companies would have to allocate money to promote good governance (in their workplaces,” he said.

Even so, a recent survey conducted by audit firm KPMG showed that many companies even in the US and the United Kingdom were burdened by anti-corruption shortcomings.

The survey found that two in five US and UK organisations with written anti-bribery and corruption policies did not distribute them to their agents, distributors, vendors, brokers, joint-venture partners or suppliers.