Corporate Crime Prevention: Visual or Effective

In different study groups, discussion forums, working groups, etc., there is technical, dogmatic, and even empirical analysis of crime prevention within an organization, its importance,relevance, implementation, feasibility, necessity, and scope.The truth is that businessmen and/or representatives of an organization are aware of the need tohave a crime prevention program that allows them to establish the parameters and guidelines forinternal and external regulatory compliance of the organization and those who are part of it. Inthat sense, the question is obvious, what to do to acquire and implement a compliance programin the company?Let’s imagine that we are going to buy a car .We will look at the model, maybe themanufacturer, but it is undeniable that many of us will look at how showy the vehicle is-ifthe dashboard has lights in five different colors- and therefore how eye-catching it may be;leaving aside features of real importance, such as safety systems or crash test results, whichhappen to be features that denote efficiency in the vehicle to be purchased.Taking the example into consideration, let’s answer to our question; it is simplyinconceivable to make a “copy and paste” of a program because it was implemented in acompany of recognized trajectory in the market, and certainly, it would be very “visual” to saythat we have a program similar to that of a reference company, remaining only for thepresentation on the company’s website, but without a real value of management and riskprevention that results in EFFECTIVE and verifiable materialization in front of third parties.That said, we highlight the importance of the effectiveness of the compliance program: (i)Creation of a corporate culture based on ethics and business values that must become part of thecompany’s “DNA”, (ii) Legal position in the face of an eventual criminal investigation for theimputation of a crime framed within the scope of the regulatory framework that regulates the
autonomous “administrative” (criminal) liability of the legal person; The company will be ableto provide the information, documentation, and evidence of its compliance program to theSuperintendence of the Securities Market, which according to Article 18 of Law 30424, asamended by Legislative Decree No. 1352, is the authority that, at the request of the PublicProsecutor’s Office, will prepare the technical report analyzing the implementation andoperation of the prevention model (effectiveness of the program), in order to issue its report,which has the evidentiary value of institutional expertise.Thus, it is not enough to claim to have or believe to have a compliance program, which willserve only to hang it on the wall (for example, to have a code of conduct within the programthat no one in the company knows of its existence), the importance is in the tangibleEFFECTIVENESS within the organization and demonstrable outside it.