PETALING JAYA: Sime Darby Plantation Bhd (SDP) has reinforced its pledge to pursue integrity in all its dealings and stay on the straight and narrow path to success.

“In our current world, the opportunities to commit wrongdoings and fraud have been made even easier with the widespread use of digital technologies.

“There are now deepfakes, artificial intelligence to deploy at our fingertips if we want to dabble with it.

“The temptation to be corrupt is greater today than ever before,” its group managing director Datuk Mohamad Helmy Othman Basha said in his speech at the Integrity Summit 2023.

“To counter these temptations, we need the strength of our own moral values and beliefs.

“This is precisely why our internal integrity campaigns are so important and we have to reinforce these messages continuously as we need to be reminded again and again to stay on the straight and narrow path, staying true to our own beliefs,” he added.

He noted the company’s commitments in this respect, saying that SDP has in place readily available channels of communication for all its employees to address any concerns related to ethics and integrity.

“We must continue to improve and I am not satisfied with whatever we have achieved today. We can do more, please do more wherever you are.

“All the business units, whether in upstream or downstream, all are part of the SDP family and we expect that you will uphold to the highest standards,” he said.

Helmy said if any employee encounters moral issues with integrity, they should report it to the relevant internal departments within the company, such as through the independent whistleblowing channel.

“Please use these channels if necessary. Rest assured that the company will always support you for acting with integrity. It is SDP’s commitment to ensure that we continue to uphold integrity irrespective of rank and seniority.

“All employers are held to the same standards of integrity, regardless of rank, levels or profession. If any of us fails to uphold these values, you would have failed our organisation. We would also have failed ourselves,” Helmy added.

He stressed that the reinforcing of its integrity pledge were not merely words, slogans or plain statements, as company systems are fully in place to prevent corrupt practices.

“In September 2023, we successfully renewed our ISO 37001 Anti Bribery Management Systems surveillance audit with no (conforming) reports recorded and this is a big achievement. This is our testament to the robustness of our internal controls,” Helmy said.

“Every (any) single incident will be reported and logged. It can be troublesome to investigate every single case. In every single subsidiary, all these reports will be presented and discussed at great length.

“Whenever there are serious cases, my instructions are to make an external report whether to the police or Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC),” he added.

The summit, which featured a forum discussion titled “Integrity Begins with You”, included two distinguished panel speakers, MACC former chief commissioner Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed and Malaysia Association of Certified Fraud Examiners president and the Anti-Corruption Advisory Board former member Datuk Seri Akhbar Satar.

The session was moderated by Pushpan Murugiah, chief executive officer of the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, also known as the C4 Center.

Click to see the article