The primary objective of the Copenhagen Charter is to provide an assessment on the design, and review incl. a GAP analysis of the members and organization. The ultimate goal is to achieve a level of BFC readiness & maturity in the organization to attain partial or complete BFC Certification:
  1. Create awareness of the Copenhagen Charter's Roadmap and Framework on Fraud and Corruption
  2. Develop the right tone-at-the-top. If the right characteristics are imposed from the Board of Directors the tenors of the middle management, can cascade its virtues so that it is understood at the bottom of the organization and avoid frustration
  3. Copenhagen Charter is an 'open source website' where members can find the relevant information and templates to use for the implementation of BFC systems.

A systematic approach to combat BFC
Current experiences with corporate clients and corporate executives in the private sector, suggests that the activities, policies, procedures, controls and monitoring required to combat Bribery, Fraud and Corruption is not a simple undertaking. The primary reason for non-compliance is that the approach is often fragmented instead of structured dealings with BFC issues.

Focus on growth requires expansion into new international markets or thru acquisitions, without forgetting the ethics and compliance issues that are involved. Copenhagen Charter can provide you with BFC design assessments to Certification at various levels of your GRC competence.

We focus on creating a robust compliance environment for our member organizations by aligning Fraud, Bribery and Corruption risks that have been on a significant rise during the past two years. Our approach focuses on:
  • How to handle the different cultural practices
  • Provide leadership time, people, technology and training
  • Perform fraud or corruption due diligence
  • Provide you with a documented response plan with thresholds
  • Provide you with a better understanding of the BFC risks.

The Copenhagen Charter assessment and certification focuses on the following practical issues on BFC for its members:
  1. Create a Fraud and Corruption free environment as a best case scenario and promote leadership involvement in local society
  2. Quantify the challenges for the major areas for corruption in the entire organization. How do they differ and what can we learn from each other
  3. Establish, Enforce and Implement individual Fraud and Corruption Strategy thru guidelines based on our Framework, Roadmap and Best Practices to define and achieve ZERO tolerance
  4. Reality - Advice on the measures the members should take, to address the mandates, and the decisions and that the can be invoked equitably
  5. Measure in order to manage. What should the Internal Controls achieve to ensure that Corruption and Fraud issues are addressed in a sustainable manner
  6. How do we communicate the preventive actions and cures back to our stakeholders in order to justify the cost/benefit
  7. Focus on the cultural and attitude issues with our integrated and - multi-agent approach to Fraud and Corruption issues
  8. The need to cooperate and report incidents to authorities/government and address certain issues in some countries
  9. The components of the implementation of a paradigm shift in companies that are affected by a major Fraud or Corruption case
  10. Information sharing between member companies and organizations (without sharing it with the criminals).

The buck stops with senior Management and Board of Directors when dealing with Fraud and Corruption.

We call it The Copenhagen Charter because the Danish capital has traditionally been ranked as the world's least corrupt country and has consistently topped the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

Wisely many Companies in all parts of the international corporate community can boast that a strong tradition of:
  • Honesty in global trade and investment
  • Transparent and well-organized approach to regulatory compliance &
  • Efficient and self-regulating Corporate Governance and Risk Management policies and assessments
  • The use of IT tools for regular monitoring

can ensure that supervising the levels of bribery, fraud and corruption are extraordinarily low.