Over the past few years, many top managers have found themselves in hot water as covert price fixing, corruption, forgery of data, and similar matters have come to light. The damage to companies has been enormous. A skilfully integrated Compliance Management System (CMS) can help you to further raise the awareness of your employees about compliant and law-abiding behaviour in order to avoid liability cases, lawsuits for damages, and official investigations.

However, this does not apply only to large companies and criminal law violations. For years, we have seen an increase in procedures aimed specifically at medium-sized companies and dealing with questions of tax law, minimum wage, data protection, and customs law.

Also available to you are a variety of tools, including internal guidelines and specific, targeted testing procedures, employee training, internal audits, and reporting systems.

Even smaller companies can now implement an internal or external compliance system, or both internal and external compliance systems. Each of these options offers distinct advantages and disadvantages. An external compliance officer might be particularly useful if you have few resources for internal staffing or simply want  to carry on business in a cost-effective way. Employing your own internal compliance officer is recommended for compliance high-risk areas, such as antitrust law.

With an external compliance officer, you will have an efficient and independent consultant at your beck and call, you will be able to avoid conflicts of interest, you will accrue no additional training and education costs, and you will be able to focus on your core business.

At the beginning of a compliance process, RIEDIGER. legal | tax will first conduct a sector-specific risk analysis at your company in order to determine where compliance is required and even if it is necessary at all. RIEDIGER. legal | tax will work with you to create internal policies and train your employees. Together, we will work out ways that best-case infringements can be prevented and identified, and we will show you how best to respond to identified violations.

If it makes sense for your company to appoint an external compliance officer (possibly only for sub-areas such as data protection, employment law, or customs), you will receive a tailor-made offer from us. We consciously avoid lump sums here in order to keep expenses for your company as low as possible.