Expert: Build solid technology barriers to eliminate risks

A leading Chinese expert has noted the importance of implementing innovative digital assessment and monitoring systems to improve the precision of anti-corruption and anti-commercial bribery compliance, and build a solid technology barrier.

Liu Mingjuan, former Tesco senior legal counsel, deputy director of compliance in the Chinese region of global biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the deputy director of compliance in the Chinese region of world leading transnational pharmaceutical enterprise UCB, said integrating big data analysis and AI technology can help identify possible risks, and automatically form risk assessment reports and risk management plans.

Liu, who has a solid legal foundation and profound theoretician knowledge, is a graduate of Hunan University and East China University of Political Science and Law with a bachelor's degree in international economic law and a master's degree in economic law.

As the global operation of a multinational company faces compliance challenges from both countries where the headquarters and branches are located, she said, it is necessary for the company to abide by laws and regulations in different countries to ensure compliance operation under different legal systems, as well as respect and balance the differences between different cultures.

It is a must to formulate a regular risk assessment system to perform the systematic review of each business risk of the company in combination with changes in internal and external environments, she said in an interview.

"Such sustainable risk scanning and improvement enables a company to timely identify potential problems and challenges and avoid accumulation and outbreak of risks," she said.

In keeping pace with the times, it is also vital to launch compliance innovation practices, based on the business partner anti-corruption due diligence procedures, Liu stressed.

"We have successfully launched a Channel Partner Management Platform, helping a company assess the background, credit condition, and potential contact with the government authorities, historical corruption situation and the corporate reputation of each partner, guaranteeing that the company's partners also conform to the requirements of anti-corruption laws and fit the company's values and standards."

Together, Liu and her team have implemented a set of comprehensive and efficient compliance plans for the top-level architecture of the company, successfully realizing conversion of international and local anti-corruption and anti-commercial bribery code of conduct into practice within the company.

In 2018, Liu reached the peak of her career and joined a Fortune Global 500 life science company headquartered in the United States. To date, she has served as the compliance leader of the company overseeing the Chinese and Indian region.

At an international anti-corruption compliance summit in Shanghai in 2024, Liu called on enterprises to establish an effective risk management mechanism in the global environment and use intelligent tools to make the risk management system more effective.

She made a key-note speech at the Thirteenth China International Anti-corruption Compliance Summit, which was held on May 28-29, 2024, and drew legal and compliance experts from top law firms, world top 100 enterprises and key government institutions in different countries and regions.

Liu's compliance plans specifically include: Building a compliance management organization; establishing a compliance management system; establishing a risk prevention system; building a supervision, inspection and continuous improvement system, in a bid to provide a warning function for compliance risks and improving the enterprise's compliance control ability.

In addition, Liu has innovatively integrated corruption perception index (CPI), a tool with certain public credibility and reference value around the world, into the intelligent risk identification and assessment model, ensuring that the matrix of the annual income and risks in different countries and regions can be seen intuitively.

"On the risk management level, we have introduced an advanced warning system that can monitor in real time abnormal behaviors in the business flow through data mining and analysis," she claimed.

Currently, it is vital to display how technologies can make compliance management more efficient and precise, she said, adding that digital compliance innovation can provide a company with strong compliance risk monitoring and management tools, as well as anti-corruption and anti-commercial bribery risk control of global transnational companies.

Please contact the writer at hanjingyan@chinadaily.com.cn