Handling of Gifts and Hospitality, Sponsoring, Donations
Both the Gifts Policy and the Donations and Sponsorship Policy are important instruments for the prevention of corruption. By imposing value limits and procedural and approval routines, Rheinmetall creates the necessary sensitivity among its employees to the use of funds for third parties in the business, regulatory and political context.
Accepting and granting advantages and bribes are acts that Rheinmetall considers to be "no goes". For this reason, every effort is made to ensure transparent and honest business relations. To this end, Rheinmetall goes to great lengths to comprehensively review potential and existing partners and to review the sustainability of internal financial flows.
In addition to an in-depth review of business partners, the instruments for this include the constant comparison of blacklistings, anti-terrorism lists, the provision of information on corruption risks in individual countries, the regulation of grants, donations and sponsorship. These measures are accompanied by constant awareness improvement measures and training of employees on the said topics.
All employees must comply with the specifications and approval processes set by the internal Donations & Sponsorship Policy and the Gifts Policy. These policies clearly describe the procedures for the allocation or acceptance of donations and contributions. The cover to the relevant policy and a detailed procedure for handling donations to and from external parties, including politicians and officials, can be inspected as follows:
The business partner approval process also foresees to evaluate recipients of donations and sponsoring efforts prior to a transaction in order to avoid conflicts of interest or similar.
Information on political contributions made by Rheinmetall and its subsidiaries is also published by the German Government on a regular basis (see link below) what guarantees for a high level of transparency.
As Rheinmetall endeavors to achieve the highest possible transparency in this area as well, this enables NGOs such as www.abgeordnetenwatch.de to validate and publish relevant information on Rheinmetall's donation and contribution activities on an ongoing basis, too.
In addition to the protective mechanisms and publications described above, further details on donations and sponsorship are regularly published – e.g. in the annual report 2019 on p. 124: "In 2019, the Rheinmetall Group spent around EUR 876 thousand on sponsoring and donated EUR 486 thousand. Donations to political parties are released exclusively by the Chairman of the Executive Board."
The underlying policy that regulates the handling of gifts and benefits is geared to ensure that all corresponding transactions are made in bona fide and to prevent undue influence or other corruption. The policy is applicable to all Management and staff levels within the Rheinmetall Group. Some further details can be inspected as follows:
