By Sascha Matuszak
Reporter, SCCE|HCCA

It’s been almost three decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and yet, doing business in the former Soviet Union can still be very challenging and exciting. The majority of the nations that make up the current Commonwealth of States which largely replaced the USSR, are emerging economies eager to participate in the global economy; there are opportunities in every sector, from energy to services to IT.

With all of that opportunity come risks. All eleven CIS nations have their own very specific, local conditions, and most attempts to unify the region under one economic rubric—be it a free trade agreement or some other economic alliance—have shattered against the geopolitical realities of a very complex part of the world. That means the rules governing, for example, bribery, contracts, and labor are often one thing in Kazakhstan, another in Moldova, and something quite different in Armenia and Russia.

“Compliance in the CIS region requires double the efforts from management in their implementation of controls and ethical principles,” said Alexander Pisemskiy, Executive Director at the CSI Group, which specializes in antifraud solutions and corporate investigations in emerging economies across the world. [Read more…]