PB Week: Aon given largest financial crime fine

The fine dates back to dealings between 14 January 2005 and 30 September 2007 "for failing to take reasonable care to establish and maintain effective systems and controls to counter the risks of bribery and corruption associated with making payments to overseas firms and individuals". The FSA added that Aon "made various suspicious payments, amounting to approximately $7m to a number of overseas and individuals."

A FSA spokeswoman told Professional Broking: "This is the first fine for these offences, and the sixth highest fine ever. They didn't have appropriate controls for this [bribery and corruption], and they were operating in countries with a high risk of bribery and corruption such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam."

An Aon spokesman said: "Our controls were not effective enough. We have now rectified the situation and we operate differently using a corruption index. Any country with a high potential corruption index, we will not use third parties. Where it is medium or low we have a more robust process of due diligence before approving payments to third parties."

In early September, last year, sister title Reinsurance revealed that Aon had placed three staff based in the Far East on a leave of absence pending the investigations. Reacting to the fine Peter Harmer, Aon UK chief executive, said it was an "age-old business practice" for brokers in the London Market to "go to far-flung parts of the world and to use introducers and third party brokers". He added: "I would fully expect other firms will be subject to investigation, or they will have to show they have the correct systems in place."

Margaret Cole, director of enforcement at Aon, said: "This sends a clear message to the UK financial services industry that it is completely unacceptable for firms to conduct business overseas without having in place appropriate anti-bribery and corruption systems and controls."

There was some good news for the international broker, however, as Aon saved themselves £2.25m by co-operating with the FSA obtaining a 30% discount from an initial fine of £7.5m.

Dentist

Despite Aon's woes and the Bank of England reducing interest rates to their lowest ever levels at 1.5%, more pressing on my mind today has been a trip to the dentist – five minutes of the dentist's precious time cost me £85, that appears to be a recession proof business!

New born

Also, congratulations to Phil Davison, the commercial director of Professional Broking and Insurance Age whose wife Dani has given birth to Henry George Davison weighing in at 7lbs 6 ounces.

And finally

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