The Siemens Integrity Initiative promotes projects around the world that seek to combat corruption and fraud, supporting educational and training programmes. It also supports Collective Action, which is building alliances against corruption in a joint effort between business and institutions to establish clean markets and ensure fair competition. In the previous two funding rounds, eight projects in the Middle East have benefited from around US$12 million.

This third tranche will see the selection of some 25 new global projects receiving around US$30 million of funding in total, over a period of three to five years. The Integrity Initiative is open to applications from legal entities including non-governmental organisations, international organisations, business associations and academic institutions. The selection process favours projects that have a direct impact on the private sector, and strengthen compliance standards and legal systems.

“I’m proud to announce this call for Middle East companies to join our fight against corruption and fraud in the interests of clean business, healthy competition and sustainable economic development in the region,” said Nadeem Anwer, Regional Compliance Head, Siemens Middle East. “We have had great success with previous projects, including building multi-stakeholder integrity networks, training, workshops and the development of a GCC Integrity Index. This latest round of funding further underlines our commitment to anti-corruption in the Middle East and beyond.”

"We have made overall good progress with the Siemens Integrity Initiative. The projects from the first two funding rounds have demonstrated visible success, and have been assessed by an external evaluator, the Canadian Universalia Management Group,” said Sabine Zindera, who heads the Initiative within the global Compliance organisation at Siemens. "I've been particularly heartened to see more and more committed and well-connected supporters joining us in our worldwide fight against corruption by rallying to the banner of "Collective Action". The external study has shown that commitment to clean markets pays off in economic terms, too. It's the key to success for sustainable business.”