RBG has joined forces with leading commercial law firm, Maclay Murray & Spens LLP (‘MMS’), to develop a system designed to help companies comply with the new UK Bribery Act.

The new Act, which is expected to come into force in Spring 2011, codifies bribery law in the UK. Businesses will be required to have in place a code of conduct and a compliance system and to ensure that their agents, partners and service providers acting on their behalf are also compliant.

The Act is far reaching and includes not only bribes given or received by companies themselves and their employees, but also bribes given by any person who performs services for or on behalf of a company. For this corporate offence no actual knowledge on the part of the company or management needs to be proven.

The only defence open to a company is to prove that it had in place adequate procedures designed to prevent persons associated with it from giving bribes in contravention of the Act. Breach of the Act can result in unlimited fines as well as imprisonment for up to 10 years for company directors, managers or employees.

As a globally active company within the energy sector, RBG worked with MMS ahead of the new Act to create an auditable compliance process. An online system has now been designed to assist compliance with the Act. The compliance system, if implemented correctly, would form part of the defence that adequate procedures were in place designed to prevent corrupt practices.

The system also encourages good working practices within companies, providing a means of raising employees’ awareness of risk and compliance issues and a means of reporting any concerns.

This will help to protect the company and management from prosecution under the Act. The primary aim is to reduce the risk of bribery occurring, but a welcome secondary outcome is reducing the risk for the company and management of prosecution under the Act.

The compliance process should also assist businesses with their risk assessment by HMRC, whilst creating an audit standard.

RBG and MMS are now keen to share this best practice and help other businesses become and remain compliant. The MMS ‘Smart Insite’ anti-bribery compliance tool - the first of its kind to be adopted by the oil and gas industry - will be unveiled to local businesses at a seminar at the Palm Court Hotel, Aberdeen, on Thursday 16th September from 4pm to 6pm.

Colin Watson, Group Legal Advisor at RBG, said: “RBG was pleased to help develop this compliance process, building on an excellent IT platform devised by Maclay Murray & Spens. We will be the first oil and gas service company to implement the compliance system, and we hope to become the company against which others will benchmark themselves. I am very much looking forward to the event as it will provide the perfect platform to showcase what we have done to ensure our compliance to the new UK Bribery Act. The system will bring about significant benefits to RBG and our customers, suppliers, joint venture partners and agents; it will ensure that clients know what to expect of us and, in reverse, what we expect from others.”

Tags: RBG Limited