Ritankar Sahu, General Counsel and Head of Compliance, MAXpower Group

I serve as the general counsel & head of compliance of MAXpower Group, Asia’s leading gas to power specialist and a key developer, owner and operator of small-to-medium gas-fired power plants. I also sit on the Board of the MAXpower-Mitsui & Co., a joint venture which operates a separate group of power assets in Myanmar. In addition to providing strategic business governance counsel to the Board, my work involves advising on power projects, turnaround management, FCPA enforcement and special situations M&A. Prior to joining MAXpower, I was the regional corporate counsel for Jacobs Engineering Group’s Asia operations, based in Singapore and Mumbai. I have also worked for Norton Rose Fulbright, at the firm’s London and Abu Dhabi offices with a practice focus on energy projects.

For MAXpower, white-collar crime exposure means unfavourable exposure to laws on bribery, sanctions, export control, anti-money laundering, internal controls, audit standards violations, etc. The potential breach of certain anti-bribery legislation like the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 1977 (FCPA) or the UK Bribery Act 2010 (UKBA) may pose a greater risk than others. The FCPA is the single biggest legislation affecting anti-bribery compliance programmes globally. The complexity of the application of the FCPA (or the UKBA) is that it is not dependent upon the existence of any contractual arrangements that a company may have in place. We have to engage in an extensive dialogue across all ranks of employees to socialise our exposure.