We attach great importance to our excellent relationships with customers and suppliers. That is why we demand and promote transparent and lawful processing of all of our company's transactions. We do this to create trust and to secure business relationships over the long term. Our principles for combating corruption and bribery are defined in our Code of Conduct, which applies throughout the entire Group, in our anti-corruption training concept, and in our Gifts and Entertainment Policy.
Our Gifts & Entertainment Policy stipulates, for example, that tangible and intangible benefits granted or received must comply with our guidelines and respect the rules of our business partners. The overarching objective, namely that our employees must be informed about and comply with all key policies, also applies here.
In view of the constantly evolving regulatory framework, we are continually optimizing our training content and identifying training requirements. Anti-corruption is a key topic that is taught across the group in classroom-based training and in our 'preventing corruption' online training program.
We have a group-wide Business Partner Compliance process (BPC) that allows us to monitor the risks and manage the workflows when dealing with intermediaries. This process includes performing a multi-stage check of new intermediaries before signing an agreement. Existing intermediaries are also subject to regular reviews depending on their risk category. This allows the BPC to safeguard and increase transparency when working with intermediaries.
