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Executive Liability and Compliance: lines of defence and firewall measures

| News | Corporate Compliance

Andersen Tax & Legal, with the cooperation of Page Executive and the France-Espagne Chamber of Commerce, analyses the importance of having a Compliance programme

Barcelona, on 1 June 2017. - Álvaro Gámez and Ramón Faus, partners at Andersen Tax & Legal, with the cooperation of Page Executive and the France-Espagne Chamber of Commerce, gave a presentation to a large number of business people today in the Catalonia Plaça Catalunya on the importance of their having a Compliance programme based on the new UNE 19601 standard, under the title of Executive Liability and Compliance: lines of defence and firewall measures.

After a brief presentation of the company, which highlighted the effort of the 2,000 professionals spread over 64 offices throughout the world to strengthen the values ​​of excellence, commitment, independence, continuity and transparency that characterise Andersen Tax & Legal, they gave an explanation of the origins of the liability of legal persons in the United States and then explained how this criminal liability of legal persons has been incorporated into the Spanish legal system by means of the reform of the Criminal Code, implemented by Constitutional Law 5/2010, of 22 June and the later Constitution Law 1/2015, of 30 March.

Ramón Faus summarised Circular 1/2016 of the State Prosecutor’s Office and then Álvaro Gámez described in more depth the new UNE 19601 Standard on Criminal Compliance Management Systems, which was published in May this year.

Subsequently, after analysing the different offences for which a legal person may be liable, they analysed the most significant criminal investigations that have taken place over the last year and then focused on the different rulings issued by the Supreme Court.

Ramón Faus highlighted that Compliance programmes need to be effective, reviewed and implemented in a genuine manner in order to generate a culture of internal Compliance, with programmes designed for appearances or convenience and aimed only at being used as evidence in the event of a criminal investigation being useless.

Álvaro Gámez highlighted the importance for corporate managers to act with the due diligence required of them in implementing this type of programme, and that they are not required to supervise all the staff, but simply to implement useful and positive measures to prevent the commission of offences within the company.

After analysing what Compliance is and in what direction it is heading, Álvaro Gámez gave a concise and clear explanation of the methodology adapted to UNE 19601 used by Andersen Tax & Legal for the implementation of a compliance programme.

Finally, Andersen Tax & Legal closed its presentation with an analysis of the 18 advantages provided by the implementation of this type of compliance programme, particularly highlighting that exemption or mitigation of the criminal liability of the legal person is only one of the advantages, which together with the other 17 advantages mean that the Compliance programme should cut across the entire legal entity.


For more information, please contact:

Álvaro Gámez Serrcarbassa

alvaro.gamez@AndersenTaxLegal.es

 

Ramón Faus Santasusana

ramon.faus@AndersenTaxLegal.es

 

Jesús Maria Saló, Director PageExecutive

jesusmariasalo@pageexecutive.com

 

You can read the news report in El Jurista.

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