5.5.1.1 Public regulation

Public regulation such as the internal control requirements contained in corporate governance codes and US legislation, mandate the establishment of corporate anti-corruption mechanisms. Compliance is directly stimulated by SOX and its penalties system, or is fostered indirectly by means of corporate governance codes to which the public authorities have applied the ' comply or explain' method (see section 5.2). Although in-control requirements do not explicitly require companies to disclose information concerning their anticorruption programmes, they do require management to assess and assume responsibility for the effectiveness of the company's internal control over the use of company assets and financial reporting. In an indirect way, the US and Dutch in-control requirements do refer to anti-corruption programmes because they refer to the COSO framework addresses corruption by giving guidelines for the safeguarding of assets. If companies maintain internal controls that ensure the reliability of financial statements, the possibility of undercover corrupt payments in the financial statements will be substantially reduced.