On May 08-12, 2023, the Corporate Governance Professional Association (CGPA), in cooperation with the Ukrainian Corporate Governance Institute and with the support of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), conducted the Anti-Corruption Compliance Training Program for compliance officers. The program’s partners were Ukrainian companies COSA, Ethicontrol, and YouControl, which are engaged in implementing anti-corruption compliance elements in practice. The heads of these companies once again shared their experience of applying anti-corruption compliance in practice and its main elements, namely: Pavlo Verkhnyatskyi, Founder and CEO of COSA, Oleh Lagodiyenko, Director of Ethicontrol, and Mykhailo Koltsov, Training and Development Manager at YouControl. Other speakers of the program were Oleksandr Okuniev, Chairman of the CGPA Board of Directors; Olga Shenk, Partner of Dispute Resolution and Compliance Practice at the Kyiv office of CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang-Ukraine; Natalia Lysa, Director of Legal and Compliance at Nestle Ukraine and Moldova, Katia Lysova, Program Director, Europe and Eurasia, CIPE.
This was one of the first programs to be held almost entirely offline since the beginning of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Oleg Lagodiyenko emphasized this, noting that everyone missed live and professional discussions in an offline format, it was very pleasant to communicate with the professional community and share best practices in identifying corruption risks, assessing them, preventing them and eliminating them.
Pavlo Verkhnyatsky spoke about corporate intelligence in the compliance system and counterparty due diligence. In line with the international compliance agenda to tighten sanctions against Russia, his report expanded the part on sanctions compliance. “As the first line of defense for their business, those responsible for third-party due diligence should pay a lot of attention to preventing sanctions-related elements from entering their companies’ ecosystem,” Pavlo said.
The program was attended by 30 representatives of public and private Ukrainian companies, as well as the Ministry of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure of Ukraine and its subordinate institutions.
The Ministry for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine has analyzed the state of anti-corruption work and assessed the professional level of anti-corruption officers of the Ministry and central executive authorities, enterprises, institutions, and organizations under its management. Based on expert research, the Ministry developed the Strategy for Training and Development of Anti-Corruption Officers for 2023-2024, which aims to increase the professional level of the officers to work effectively towards achieving the goals of the State Anti-Corruption Program for 2023-2025 and minimize corruption risks in the country’s top priority areas during the recovery period. A vital area of the Strategy implementation is the training of anti-corruption officers. The Ministry sent its representatives to the training to implement the Strategy.
The program ended with group presentations of the final exercise “Developing a system of measures to minimize the identified corruption risks in a model company”.
All program participants are satisfied with the program and their participation in it. They noted the professionalism of the speakers and the practicality of the material presented, which inspired them to further dive deeper into the topic and work on additional materials that the lecturers pointed out in their presentations. Pavlo Shmyhora, Chief Specialist of the Department for Prevention and Detection of Corruption, State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety, said in his feedback: “A large amount of information relevant to my professional activities was provided in a short time. High-quality organization of the event, qualified and interesting speakers. I liked everything. I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate!”