The Pearl Initiative, a business-led non-profit organisation promoting a corporate culture of accountability and transparency, held a roundtable event on Tuesday morning titled Whistleblowing: A Pillar of Sound Corporate Governance. The event, held at the Shangri-La Hotel, Dubai featured experts from Pinsent Masons and Kroll.
Over 40 participants, including senior professionals and industry leaders from a number of public and private companies in the UAE and the region, took the opportunity to reflect on current processes within their organisations and learn new ways in which to build upon existing practices.
A leading objective of the morning was to help participants understand whistleblowing and its value to the private sector in preventing waste, corruption, fraud, and abuse.
Amine Antari, Managing Director, Kroll started off the conversation by providing the attendees with a brief background of his experience with whistleblowing programmes and highlighted real-life case studies of operational whistleblowing programmes.
Mahmoud Selim, Legal Director, Pinsent Masons then gave a brief introduction into the importance of whistleblowing and why educating people about whistleblowing programmes and their whistleblower rights is essential. “The biggest issue with whistleblowing is it is not widely understood. Most hear about it in newspapers or on the internet but don’t understand how vital the role of a whistleblower is,” Selim said
Antari added to Selim’s point about the lack of public knowledge about whistleblowing and mentioned a need for a “change in the culture” surrounding whistleblowing.
Selim and Antari spoke about best practices and policies they have seen in practice that support the prevention of corruption while encouraging an open and honest business environment.
Selim talked about whistleblowers as an “invaluable source” of information for combatting fraud and corruption with Antari referencing a 2017 report by Kroll that identified key challenges and opportunities when it comes to implementing whistleblowing programmes. The panellists shed light on how these can be addressed by offering key guidelines to navigate around potential pitfalls.
Selim reinforced: “We continue to witness drastic reinforcements of new laws and legislations in the UAE and across the region, especially in the financial sector. These new provisions are not only modernising the way transparency is being practiced across private institutions, but also protecting the liabilities and reputational risks of millions of staff members operating in large-scale and mid-scale private businesses across the Gulf Region.”
Yasmine Omari, Executive Director at the Pearl Initiative, emphasised: “Whistleblowing mechanisms not only offer a platform for business stakeholders to report genuine concerns, but also creates an authentic source of information that helps management identify lapses in its processes that it may otherwise be unable to detect.”
Antari closed the panel by reminding the room why safeguarding whistleblowers benefits everyone. “Whistleblowing is a key method of detecting fraud, corruption and employee wrongdoing. It is imperative that organisations protect this valuable resource, the whistleblower.”
The event was part of the Pearl Initiative’s Anti-Corruption Best Practices programme, supported by the Siemens Integrity Initiative. It aligns with the organisation’s mission to promote a corporate culture of accountability and transparency as a key driver of competitiveness across the Gulf Region.
The Pearl Initiative has developed the Gulf Integrity Indicator as a free tool to measure integrity practices within an organisation, and has issued various reports available for access on the Pearl Initiative Resource Centre, in Arabic and English on the effective implementation of business integrity policies and initiatives.
The Pearl Initiative has confirmed that they will be holding similar events in the future across the Gulf Region to provide private businesses the opportunity to learn more about integrity practices in business.
Founded in 2010, the Pearl Initiative develops programmes and publishes regional research reports and case studies, with aims to influence the regional business and student communities towards implementing higher standards of corporate governance within the Gulf Region.
