Preventing Fraud and Ensuring Accurate Financial Disclosures
Our Commitment
We are honest in all of our business dealings, financial reporting and record keeping. We depend on accurate records to measure our performance, inform management decisions and produce reports for investors, regulators and other stakeholders. Keeping good records creates an environment that discourages fraud and makes improper accounting practices easier to spot and address. Our stakeholders also expect us to maintain timely, accurate and complete records and disclose financial information and reports that fully comply with applicable law.
What Is Fraud?
Examples of fraud include:
- Misusing or misappropriating Company funds or other assets
- Falsifying Company records, documents or financial statements
- Committing forgery
- Providing or receiving kickbacks or taking part in similar schemes
- Altering manufacturing, quality or inventory data to meet operational goals
- Presenting false medical information to obtain disability or other benefits
- Over-reporting time worked to receive more pay or to avoid discipline
How We Act with Integrity
- Know and be alert for signs of fraud.
- Record all assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses and business transactions promptly, completely, accurately and within the proper accounting period.
- Take reasonable steps to confirm that each customer is involved in genuine business activities and provides funds from legitimate sources.
- Report concerns about fraud, waste or misuse to your plant controller, Hexcel’s Chief Accounting Officer, the Law Department, the SafeTalk Helpline or to Hexcel’s Audit Committee.
- Use or include imprecise wording, guesswork, personal commentary or conclusions beyond your expertise in the records you create.
- Do anything that could create even the appearance of fraudulent activity.
- Set up or maintain for any purpose any cash funds or other assets or liabilities that are secret, unauthorized or unrecorded.
- Approve transactions outside the scope of your delegated authority.
Integrity in Action
I saw a co-worker sign off on an inspection report when he hadn’t actually done the inspection. What should I do?
You should report what you saw to your manager, the Law Department or the SafeTalk Helpline. Signing off on the report when he had not actually done the inspection would be considered a form of falsifying records and would violate our Code.
Integrity in Action
A third party engaged by Hexcel is contractually required to submit, along with its invoices, monthly reports of the services it has provided. Based on my interactions with this third party, I believe that the information in a report it submitted is not true or does not completely describe the third party’s activities. What should I do?
If you have concerns about records or reports submitted by a third party, no matter how trivial, please raise the matter through one of our available reporting channels immediately. If a third party submits an inaccurate or incomplete activity report, we do not know whether Hexcel funds are being used properly.