QIAGEN is committed to conducting business lawfully, ethically, and with high integrity. These fundamental values and principles are the undisputed key to the long-term success of our company. QIAGEN’s Executive Committee stands for these values and principles and each employee in his or her function is expected to conduct our business in full accordance with the law and the applicable ethical standards. To support our commitment, QIAGEN has established a Compliance Program under the leadership of the Head of Legal and Compliance supported by a Compliance Committee that coordinates our Compliance efforts and which consists of managers from Legal, Internal Audit, HR, Commercial Operations, Trade Compliance and Regulatory functions. The Compliance Program is overseen by the Audit Committee of the Supervisory Board.
Our Corporate Code of Conduct and Ethics, which is available in several languages and which is accompanied by a number of specific corporate compliance policies, translates the applicable legal, regulatory and ethical requirements into clear, precise and understandable guidelines for our employees. Each employee has to acknowledge the acceptance and understanding of these policies, as the QIAGEN Anti-Corruption Policy. The applicable global and local compliance policies are available for all employees in our company’s intranet.
We offer a number of communication resources for compliance matters to our employees. We have established a hotline for the reporting of accounting related concerns on an anonymous basis in good faith and our Compliance Program offers a direct email and telephone hotline for our employees to address questions about and suggestions for the improvement of our Compliance Program.
Compliance awareness of our employees in all areas of the world is further increased by regular trainings which are held by external as well as inhouse Legal and Regulatory experts. In addition, QIAGEN has entered into a long term online training program with LRN, the global leader in ethics and compliance management and education. LRN supports QIAGEN in making responsible conduct part of our everyday business practice. LRN has developed a full range of ethics and compliance solutions, from educating the workforce on compliance issues to improving management oversight of legal risks and providing executive insight on how corporate culture impacts business performance. These programs are available for all employees world wide in local language.
QIAGEN does not tolerate non-compliance and our internal policies provide that detected issues are properly reported and promptly responded with corrective action.