7 march 2023. The Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia and the Barcelona Provincial Council are organizing a conference on 'Compliance and integrity in public entities', with the collaboration of: the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE).

During the Congress will be presented the final report of the study project to promote a culture of regulatory compliance and integrity in various types of public sector entities (public commercial companies, public entities of a business nature, consortiums) within the scope of the Office Anti-Fraud, which has been carried out with the aforementioned universities through a collaboration agreement, which began in 2019.

The study arises from the conviction that institutional integrity cannot be achieved only with regulatory compliance measures, but that it is also necessary to adopt others based on the values of service and public ethics, to give priority to public interests over private ones. Regulatory compliance models in the public sector must be even more demanding than in the private sector and must go beyond the existence or not of criminal liability. The adoption of a regulatory compliance program should serve to create a corporate culture of ethics and integrity.

For this reason, in 2019 the Anti-Fraud Office promoted a collaboration agreement to carry out this study, which was initially signed by the UCLM, the UAB and the University of Vigo, then the USC and UNIMORE joined. The purpose of the study and the Congress is to promote a culture of regulatory compliance and integrity in various types of public sector entities (public commercial companies, public entities of a business nature, consortiums) within the scope of action of the Anti-Fraud Office.

The final report of the project has been prepared jointly with professors and researchers from these universities, experts in the field, as well as with the participation of technical personnel from the Prevention Directorate of the Anti-Fraud Office. The project includes the experience of Italian public companies in terms of regulatory compliance and corruption prevention in public organizations. The comparative experience allows us to see what can be learned both from the model applied here and from the Italian model.

The comparative experience allows us to see what can be learned both from the model applied here and from the Italian model. The linked Italian projects include the experience of Italian public companies in the field of regulatory compliance and prevention of corruption in public organizations and have been carried out by the team from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, which has also developed the Far Mission Oriented study 2020 "Protocovid" and Go For it.

This project is linked to the UAB research project team on the Prevention of corruption in the public business sector, PID2020-117526RB-I00, financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, a complementary project to this study that we present here.

On March 23, the Congress will begin with the opening, which will be in charge of Miguel Ángel Gimeno, Director of the Anti-Fraud Office, Marc Verdaguer i Montanyà, President Delegate of the Area of Innovation, Local Governments and Territorial Cohesion of the Barcelona Provincial Council, and Adán Nieto Martín, Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), who will present the final report of the project. The host of the day will be the Director of Anti-Fraud Prevention Directorate, Òscar Roca.

The first presentation will be by the Technical Deputy Director of the Second Audit Department of the Court of Accounts, Miguel Ángel Vaz-Serra Meléndez, who will speak about the audit of ethics and integrity systems by the Court of Accounts. Next, the final report of the project will be presented, the contents, the conclusions, the recommendations and the methodology used for its realization, which will be carried out by the academics of the universities that have participated in the project.

In the afternoon, the institutions that have collaborated with this project will be given a voice, which will debate the close assessments and recommendations of the final report in two round tables.

The 24th will be dedicated to analyzing the experience of Italian public companies with the authors of the comparative document and the transposition of the European Directive for the Protection of Whistleblowers into Italian law. Next, the relations between public administrations and instrumental entities of the public sector will be discussed.

The Congress will close with speeches by the Director of the Anti-Fraud Office, Miguel Ángel Gimeno, and the UAB Criminal Law professor, Míriam Cugat.

If you want to see more details about the program, click here.

 

Registration:

To register for the online session you must fill out this form.

 

Certification of assistance:

The organization will certify people who attend a minimum of 80% of the congress and request it. For these purposes: people who attend in person will have to do the different check-ins required during the congress; and people who attend online will have to connect to Zoom with their name and surname(s). Once the congress is held, it will be necessary to request the certification writing an e-mail to prevencio@antifrau.cat indicating name, surname(s) and ID number.

 

More information:

Compliance and integrity project

Collaboration agreement

Entities participating in the project

Anti-Fraud organizes workshops to discuss and contrast conclusions and recommendations with the organizations that participate in the 'Regulatory Compliance and Integrity Project' for a diverse type of public entities