Anti-corruption measures

PRINCIPLE 10: Combating corruption

Commitments and management systems

METRO Business Principles

Anti-corruption guideline

Business partner due diligence process

OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, embedded in a variety of corporate guidelines

Supply Chain Initiative (SCI)

Measures 2018/19

Group-wide compliance communications providing staff with information in various formats, including METRO’s social network platform, in order to ensure compliant conduct

New anticorruption guideline consolidating two previous guidelines (business partners and public officials) developed and rolled-out which includes a risk-based business partner due diligence process that evaluates and categorizes business partners based on risk KPIs. In parallel an IT-tool (CDDS – Compliance Due Diligence Solution) has been developed that digitizes the business partner due diligence process including an in-depth due diligence for high risk business partner with external database check.

Risk scaling approach implemented and solidified that classifies METRO companies into different risk classes (e.g. high, medium and low risk) as per various internal and external risk KPIs, and which leads to a scaling up or down of compliance measures including those related to anticorruption, depending on the applicable risk class of the METRO company in question

Achievements 2018/19

Examples of internal communication measures:

  • Compliance Talks
  • Compliance presence on METRO’s social network
  • Communications campaign, including new flyers and posters on METRO’s Business Principles that also deal with anticorruption.

Examples of external communication measures:

  • Membership of and active involvement in the Alliance for Integrity, an anti-corruption initiative run by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the United Nations Global Compact network
  • Training management further optimised (new anti-corruption eTraining, digitized Business Principle Training, new model face-to-face antitrust training) for better adaptation of all training in the area of Corporate Legal Affairs & Compliance and to ensure there is a sufficient array of training for the target group, with defined mandatory trainings.
  • Compliance trainings were mandatory throughout the group either by way of face-to-face or eTraining.