At the end of March, I attended the now traditional OECD Global Anti-Corruption and Integrity Forum (GACIF) in Paris. More than 3000 people registered and a large number attended the meetings in person.

There were a few interesting trends:

• an increased and visible participation of the private sector
• a rebalance of the policy discussion towards the need to push for public sector integrity at least as much as business integrity
• an understanding that anticorruption compliance is to be seen in a more holistic way at company, national and international level
• a strong belief that AI will be a powerful tool for more effective compliance

Aside from these general trends, two other points caught my attention:

First, the admitted difficulty to assess the effectiveness of compliance programs beyond the use of purely quantitative indicators.  In this respect several CCOs also pointed out the desirability to harmonise the expectations from public authorities.

Second, the absence of any open discussion on the persistence (or not) of an international consensus over the fight against corruption in light of an increasingly fragmented world. This was really the “Mammoth in the Room”!

In corridor discussions, there was a discernible concern on the political use of the fight against corruption, as well as on the difficulty to garner consensus in international bodies.

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