Conference Magazine - Deutsches Eigenkapitalforum

Legal
“Other challenges already exist alongside accounting,
capital investment and corruption cases”
Interview with Dr. Stefan Heißner, Partner at Ernst & Young GmbH
Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, about financial crimes such as
fraud and compliance risks and how to deal with them in practice.
Conference Magazine: Dr. Heißner, could it be said that
during a crisis companies are closest to themselves and,
therefore, fraud cases increase, also because they are then
usually more tolerated?
Heißner: The links cannot be presented in such sweeping
terms. To begin with, during a crisis employees in a company,
who for example are responsible for commercial
success in sales, come under increasing pressure for success
and thus a tendency towards marginal ethics grows.
Even more, this is also related to the fact that these
employees frequently have variable salary components
which depend on sales success. In a survey which Ernst &
Young carried out last year against the backdrop of the
crisis, 25% of the employees surveyed in Germany alone
admitted that they consider bribery payments to support
the company in a crisis as morally justified, by the way in
Russia 45% of the employees surveyed were of this
opinion. Here in parti cular, this is the perspective of employees
working in areas at risk of corruption and at best
that of lower management.
Conference Magazine: Isn't it interesting that major financial
crime cases almost exclusively come to light in times of
crisis, how do you explain that?
Heißner: Well, at Enron and Madoff for example, the rigging
was discovered as a result of insolvency. All major “fraud”
cases have one thing in common which is that the public
asks why rigging to that extent was not recognized at a
much earlier stage. In my experience, and I have already
been working in this field in different roles for almost 20
years, supervisory institutions, legislators and also companies
have all been looking for answers, have analyzed
famous cases in great detail and introduced measures over
the years to prevent similar cases in future. The key words
here are SOX regulations, the German Corporate Governance
Initiative, the minimum requirements of compliance
management systems in the finance sector and also fraudrelated
auditing standards as well as an auditor's proposal
of auditing standards for compliance management sys -
tems.
Page 26 Deutsches Eigenkapitalforum Fall 2010
Dr. Stefan Heißner manages the
Fraud Investigation & Dispute Ser
vices Germany Switzerland Austria,
Central & South Eastern Europe, CIS
Division at Ernst & Young.
Dr. Stefan Heißner, Partner,
Ernst & Young GmbH
Conference Magazine: How do they work?
Heißner: Leading German companies have compliance
management systems in the meantime which serve as a
standard to other companies worldwide. Fundamental
answers to an increasingly complex business life combined
with incentive structures as well as organization and control
weaknesses with fraud and corruption have been specified.
Now it is all about the continuous further development of
fraud and compliance management systems and their
effective and efficient integration into companies' existing
management systems. However, in the process we must
not ignore that other challenges already exist alongside
accounting, capital investment and corruption cases. Here I
would like to explicitly address data protection, cartel cases
and foreign trade regulation violations and blacklists. In my
opinion, more themes will be added in future.
Conference Magazine: And the Compliance Manager,
who is not officially governed by management: what are
your experiences with such a position?
Heißner: The role of the compliance officer is meanwhile
generally not only seen in companies listed on the capital
market but also in owner-managed SMEs. I believe that