About

Diageo is the number one premier alcoholic distiller in the world boasting an enviable range of brands with more than 180 different products. The company’s operation in Colombia is one of its most successful performers globally, with its legal team being no exception to that. The department characterises its main activities as giving proactive support driven by commercial priorities, risk mitigation and maintenance, the protection of Diageo’s reputation and always giving a distinct and valuable perspective. The excellence of the legal department relies in its initiative to be seen as a high performance team that takes advantage of each member capabilities, potentialities and strengths as well as the use of technical and operational tools for management. Containing five members, the legal department has three main divisions and is led by the head of legal, brand protection and control compliance and ethics (CC&E) Pablo Urrego, an experienced lawyer who recently joined, as he says, ‘in order to reinforce the team and lead the area with a strategic mindset, focused on enabling and supporting the ambition of the company’. The department is divided into the legal, CC&E and the brand protection divisions, and are each led by talented lawyers and compliance professionals. In Urrego’s words, the purpose of the brand protection department within the legal function is ‘leading and executing the strategy to reduce and mitigate the negative effects of the adulteration problem in our country, in order to protect our consumers and the reputation of the company and our brands. [Also] being enablers of the business, preventing and mitigating risks and supporting the business successes’. In the last year, the department added the CC&E functions to take on a number of additional tasks such as the implementation of a CARM programme to assess the effectiveness of internal controls environment, carrying out the market’s risk management before implementing a training agenda of global and local policies and also actively participating in the investigation process of potential violations of the code of conduct, policies, and any questionable behaviours or practices. The team also performs the compliance officer function to coordinate the execution of controls aimed at mitigating the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing, among others. As a result of all of this, the team has become more “hands-on” towards the main issues of the company and not merely counsellors, having stakeholders closer to the team and better advised throughout their projects. Furthermore, the entire legal function has grown with the technological innovations the company has invested in, and Urrego adds that ‘a good portion of our work is now developed through apps and platforms that seek simplicity and speed, which are two of the main focuses of the company organisation wise, having quality always in the centre of our goals’.