On the issue of providing the audit services of the external assessment of corruption risks in the activity of enterprises and joint stock companies of the state form of ownership: preparation and planning

The article is devoted to the issues of external assessment of corruption risks, which is carried out by organizations that provide audit services, in the activity of enterprises and joint-stock companies of the state form of ownership. Corruption offenses in the activity of legal persons are quite common, which causes serious moral, economical and political problems, hinders development and distorts competition. They also have an extremely negative impact on the system of law enforcement and regulatory agencies, destroy independent justice. Corruption increases the doing business cost, reduces certainty in commercial relations, increases the value of goods and services, reduces their quality, destroys trust in government institutions and hinders fair and efficient market operations. It is legal persons that bear a significant part of the responsibility for the practical contribution to the fight against corruption, independently creating an appropriate atmosphere of corruption intolerance.The purpose of the paper is to highlight the methodology and issues concerned to the practice of external assessment of corruption risks of enterprises' and joint stock companies' of state ownership activity by independent auditors in terms of preparation and planning.This article focuses on the stages and sub-stages, as well as their essential content and significance, concerned to the preparation and planning of external assessment of corruption risks. The list of possible sources of information for external assessment of corruption risks is given. A number of problems of normative and legal, methodical and psychological character, which arise during the external assessment of corruption risks in activity of the enterprises and joint-stock companies of the state form of ownership are highlighted. The external assessment of corruption risks is a systematic work to identify the corruption risks in the enterprise and consists of the following stages: preparation and planning of corruption risk assessment; corruption risks assessment; determination the directions of individual corruption prevention; preparation of draft report, project discussion, and a final report on corruption risk assessment. In turn each of the stages consists of several sub-stages. The result of the corruption risks assessment and the determination of corruption prevention areas depends on the implementation quality of each sub-stage of the external assessment of corruption risks.