Parvez Hayat - President, Vigilance Study Circle (Delhi - NCR Chapter) - said that there are learnings from each side. CVOs and Compliance Officers should be aware of the laws and tools to address the issue of corruption. The CVOs of public sector had a wide mandate covering their responsibility.

KV Chowdary - Central Vigilance Commissioner defined corrupt practices as essentially those that do not follow laid down procedures, which also amounts to a lack of integrity. Offering interesting anecdotes to elucidate instances of corruption - illicit and implicit, he stressed on the necessity to identify what situation would most likely lead to corruption and devising ways to pre-empt and prevent it.

He also highlighted challenges that the private sector faces in enforcing ethical practice due to constraints in budget and resources. While the public sector has many checks and balances for example Financial Intelligence Units, checks on suspicious transactions especially of individuals in Public Service with Political exposure, as well as Tax returns filed by Government employees. He also suggested a 5 pronged approach towards building more stringent compliance and Transparency norms among the private sector -

·         The need to put in place an Ethics Code,

·         Identification of Risk areas,

·         Assessment of risk and probability of its occurrence,

·         Mitigation and

·         Awareness building - he underlined the necessity to know every clause and condition in the tendering process as well as how integrity Pacts work.

Chowdary lauded the efforts of CII and Vigilance Study Circle (Delhi - NCR Chapter) for convening such interactions and encouraged the private sector to approach CVC freely with the objective to share and exchange technical and investigative support and ideas on effectively planting seeds of anti-corruption.

Sumit Makhija, Senior Director, Deloitte Touche Tomatsu India LLP - stressed the paramount need to prevent corrupt practices and suggested raising awareness among public towards Zero tolerance for fraud, introducing more number of fast track courts so the outcomes may not be diluted due to processes, training and sensitizing top managements, due diligence of parties and open mechanisms for people to freely report corrupt behaviour.
END