We can add Acteon to the list of OFAC settlements for 2019, which is quickly turning into a robust sanctions’ enforcement year.  Acteon is a UK based company, which provides subsea services in the oil and gas industry.  (Acteon recently announced the acquisition of Benthic, an Australian owned subsea company, which operates out of Houston, Texas). In the first enforcement action, Acteon and its operating...

Matt Stankiewicz, Senior Associate at The Volkov Law Group, rejoins us for a blog posting on OFAC sanctions law. Matt can be contacted at [email protected]. Sanctions law can be complex.  The sanctions programs themselves are often a tangled web of do’s and don’t’s – various wind down periods, General Licenses, payment structures, and more.  In order to enforce these laws and regulations, OFAC must necessarily...

Global banks are the poster children of sanctions violations and the importance of trade compliance.  At the top of the heap is Standard Chartered Bank. In a long-awaited resolution of a multi-year investigation, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the New York District Attorney’s (DANY), the Federal Reserve, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) and the United...

NAVEX Global’s Hotline benchmark report (here) is an excellent annual report which helps companies to understand how well their hotline and incident management system is operating.  The survey is based on over 1 million reports from 2,738 customers.The NAVEX report also is based on all types of reporting avenues, including hotlines and web-based systems. Interestingly, NAVEX noted that overall reporting rates remained consistent with 2016...

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has promised to issue guidance on effective sanctions compliance programs.  This is a long-anticipated update to prior information OFAC has released on the same subject. OFAC has raised the stakes for sanctions enforcement, especially with respect to Iran and Venezuela sanctions programs.  So far this year, OFAC has announced a number of significant enforcement actions and...

Standard Chartered Bank certainly has its troubles.  You know a company is in trouble, however, when it breathes a sigh of relief after paying nearly $1.1 billion in fines and penalties and compares itself to BNP Paribas, the global French bank, which paid over $8 billion for pervasive US sanctions violations.  The Justice Department and OFAC have had a target-rich environment when reviewing global bank...

Stephen Cheng and Noah Smith, Associates at The Volkov Law Group, recently published an article on Law 360, How Warren Bill Would Change Liability For Corporate Execs. “If the criminal penalties in the Corporate Executive Accountability Act — recently proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — ever became law, they would usher in sweeping implications for the way big companies approach their legal compliance efforts.”...

Global banks are the poster children of sanctions violations and the importance of trade compliance.  At the top of the heap is Standard Chartered Bank. In a long-awaited resolution of a multi-year investigation, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the New York District Attorney’s (DANY), the Federal Reserve, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) and the...

Fresenius Medical, the largest supplier of dialysis equipment and services agreed to pay $231 million to the Justice Department and the SEC to resolve FCPA violations in 17 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.  Fresenius entered a non-prosecution agreement  with the Justice Department, in which it agreed to pay an $87 million payment and a two-year corporate monitor.  Fresenius agreed to enhance its compliance program and...

For criminal defense practitioners, it is easy to lose perspective when focused on FCPA, export control/sanctions and AML prosecutions.  In the healthcare fraud area, prosecutors continue to aggressively enforce anti-kickback and fraud statutes through criminal prosecutions. The Justice Department has made its priority in this area clear – by dedicating law enforcement resources and prosecutors to investigating and prosecuting healthcare fraud schemes.  As government participation...