Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

19-23 March 2007, Strasbourg

GRECO adopted its Seventh General Activity Report (2006) – including a chapter on “the protection of whistleblowers”, which represents an important tool for combating corruption in public administration. The section also addresses a number of issues for Member States who are seeking to create a whistleblowing culture.

For the second part of the meeting devoted to a Start-up training seminar on the transparency of party funding (Theme II of GRECO’s Third Evaluation Round), GRECO’s representatives were joined by their national Evaluators nominated in the framework of the Third Evaluation Round. The enlarged audience (more than 100 participants) heard presentations from international experts specialised in this field, focusing on transparency, supervision and sanctions. The conclusions of the workshop will provide valuable guidance to evaluators and to GRECO, in particular in view of the first wave of Third Round on-site visits to be organised during June/July (Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United Kingdom).

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The SFBC (Swiss Federal Banking Commission) published recently its latest annual report.

The report underlines that in 2006, there were a number of widely publicised cases where attempts were made to test the ethical borders and that debate on this topic is entirely desirable: it reflects the sensitivity of the issue, encourages the necessary awareness and documents the extent of the potential loss of reputation – irrespective of any breach of supervisory or indeed criminal law. The Banking
Commission is monitoring this development closely. Ultimately, the Commission grants licences only to those who enjoy a good reputation and guarantee proper conduct of their business activities.
Those who overreach the borders of ethical conduct undermine trust in the financial centre. Yet trust is the greatest asset it has to offer. A climate of trust that has taken a long time to establish can be destroyed in an instant. It is based on personal integrity and expert solutions; and supervisory authorities also have a role to play.

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One of the key objectives of then ewly established Financial Crime & Intelligence Division (FCID) is to assess the nature and scale of financial crime and our performance in tackling it. It is often said that no reliable figures exist for financial crime, and many others suggest that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) should focus solely on tackling financial crime rather than measuring it.

A survey was carried out and released yesterday. In conducting this survey it became apparent from a very early stage that the FCID would not be able to establish the quantum of financial crime in the UK. After all, firms are unable to see the complete picture, and there was a common perception among respondents that all people involved in the fight to reduce financial crime can only see the tip of the iceberg. Despite this, the FCID is continuing to explore the potential for establishing a recognised methodology to assess the scale and incidence of
the financial crime in the UK.

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