Anti-corruption worry

Transparency International calls on governments to ensure defence contractors have ethics and anti-corruption programmes in place

Two-thirds of defence companies do not have transparent and robust enough anti-corruption policies in place, a survey by an anti-corruption NGO has revealed.

Transparency International UK called on governments running defence tenders to ensure that their contractors have ethics and anti-corruption programmes in place, before allowing them to bid, in order to promote greater accountability. 

The Defence Companies Anti-Corruption Index 2015 measured the transparency and quality of ethics and anti-corruption programmes of 163 defence companies from 47 countries. 

Firms were assessed and ranked according to publicly available information about their policies and codes, leadership, the training of employees and their whistle-blowing policies. Additionally, 63 companies shared non-public information about their internal anti-corruption policies.

Among the highest-ranking firms were Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, while Dassault Aviation, Nexter and General Atomics were found among the worst. Several UK firms, such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, were ranked as having ‘good’ approaches to ethics and anti-corruption policies.

Overall, companies were found to lack formal whistle-blowing channels for employees to report concerns. Only eight companies had systems in place to protect whistle-blowers from retaliatory behaviour. 

Transparency International UK recommends that management ensures there is a strong ethics and anti-corruption programme that is periodically reviewed and publicly available.