Estonian justmin recommends Tallinn use anti-bribery ISO standard

TALLINN - Estonian Minister of Justice Urmas Reinsalu has recommended that the City of Tallinn implement the anti-bribery ISO standard translated into Estonia, which specifies requirements and directs the imposition, realization and maintenance of the anti-bribery management system.

"Considering extensive problems with corruption in Tallinn, I am submitting proposals for hindering corruption. Under the leadership of the Justice Ministry, we are creating an electronical corruption prevention and training environment for local governments, which among other things also includes instructional material for corruption avoiding procedures in local governments, an aid for detecting corruption risks and a test for checking corruption awareness," Reinsalu said.

"In addition, a guide for establishing an internal control system was completed recently, which helps council members, rural municipality mayors or city mayors and members of rural municipality or city governments, but also officials in preventing corruption. This includes guidelines, which the internal control should pay attention to as well as how to act. I also advise to read through those guidelines carefully and improve the functioning of the internal control system in Tallinn," the minister wrote to the mayor of Tallinn and the chairman of the city council.

Reinsalu also called for the City of Tallinn to familiarize themselves with and implement the ISO standard translated into Estonian at the request of the Justice Ministry. The aim of this is to prevent and detect bribes and it offers concrete measures for implementing an anti-bribery policy. For example, the standards demands that the organization define risks that affect its ability to establish the culture and management of an organization free of bribery. In addition, the organization must regularly assess bribery risks, enable the notification of bribery and offer anti-bribery training.