Suspicious of compliance

In order to prevent corruption or tax evasion, compliance departments in companies and public authorities overshoot the mark by far. The excessive rules and regulations are often unparalleled in terms of nonsense, criminalize innocent employees, discredit business partners, paralyse their own organization and open the door to professional intriguers. Sprinkling in a "compliance suspect" in the right place has a similar effect to shouting "bomb" in the departure hall of Frankfurt Airport.

A bottle of wine at Christmas, an invitation to a business lunch or even to the Oktoberfest can turn colleagues into petty criminals and Germany into a banana republic in no time at all. Compliance officers, on the other hand, are so overworked that they outsource the persecution mania to - watch out! - to external data protection or compliance officers. These in turn threaten to terminate the business relationship on behalf of their clients and thus gain access to the business premises and data of preferably medium-sized and smaller contractors in order to check whether everything is legal there. The business model even works on a subscription basis. "Unannounced" audits four times a year are available for as little as 8,000 euros - at the expense of the audited party, of course. The service is largely free of charge for the client. Is this actually legal?

So far, none of this has prevented criminal behavior. On the contrary. The big fish continue to swim unchallenged in their koi carp ponds and invent new rules for compliance. The bottom line is that politics and business can no longer accept anything, not even common sense.

Anita Würmser has been an institution in logistics for decades. The business and logistics journalist was editor-in-chief of "Verkehrs-Rundschau", "Logistik Heute" and "Logistik inside". Würmser is the founder and jury chairwoman of the Logistics Hall of Fame. In her exclusive columnin LT-manager, "Mutti", as she respectfully calls the industry, has not minced her wordssince issue one.