I tend to repeat myself and when it comes to corporate cultured and ethics, I admit it.  A company without an ethical culture, or at least a commitment to an ethical culture, will be unable to achieve an effective ethics and compliance program. NAVEX Global’s recent benchmarking report was an important confirmation that successful compliance programs often have two strong characteristics – senior level buy...

As part of its new corporate compliance credit program, the Justice Department’ Antitrust Division issued, for the first time in its history, guidance to assist prosecutors in the evaluation of compliance programs at the charging and sentencing stages of investigations.  (Here).  The Antitrust Division’s new guidance joins DOJ’s Criminal Division Guidance (Here) and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC) Framework for Sanctions...

NAVEX Global and the Volkov Law Group have issued a new Vendor Risk Management Toolkit: Best Practices for Vendor Risk Profiling — the new toolkit is available HERE. Managing third parties can be tricky, and mistakes costly. But with hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of vendors, where do you begin? Our three-part toolkit provides expert advice on profiling your third party vendors using factors...

In yet another major compliance development, the Justice Department announced the adoption of a new policy to credit effective compliance programs in resolving criminal cartel prosecutions against corporations.  Since the 1990s, the Antitrust Division’s policy regarding corporate compliance programs was generally fixed given the ability of companies to seek benefits under the leniency program.  In this respect, the first reporting company would earn immunity and...

It is easy to get swept up into compliance trends, prognosticators of the future, and future compliance terms such as “artificial intelligence,” or “blockchain.”  Do not get me wrong, these are the terms for the future and eventually they will be part of common compliance conversations. But sometimes we need to get back to basics.  In some cases, Chief Compliance Officers need to remind themselves...

OFAC is clearly sending a message about sanctions enforcement and compliance responsibilities.  OFAC is aggressively seeking out new targets for enforcement.  OFAC continues to focus on Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, aligning itself with current foreign policy objectives. Here is a brief outline of three recent enforcement actions: Western Union (HERE) — On June 7, 2019, OFAC released a settlement with Western Union under...

NAVEX Global recently released an important compliance report – 2019 Definitive Corporate Compliance Benchmarking Report (HERE).  NAVEX’s report contains a number of interesting findings and brings together several current compliance trends and themes.  In contrast to focused benchmarking reports, NAVEX’s new report provides a more holistic view of compliance programs.  NAVEX’s new approach reflects the trend of consolidating compliance functions and responsibilities.  As this trend...

Matt Stankiewicz, Senior Associate at the Volkov Law Group, rejoins us for an interesting posting on Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans. Matt can be reached at [email protected]. It was inevitable.  With the continuing growth of the cryptocurrency industry, major corporations were surely going to begin to figure out how best to profit from it.  Facebook has entered the game in a massive way with the announcement of...

As the blockchain industry continues to grow, we’ll begin to see traditional industries shifting to the blockchain to leverage the technology. Unstoppable domains is a company working to place web domains on the blockchain. Instead of traditional extensions like .com, .net, or .io. Unstoppable Domains will utilize .zil addresses as smart contracts on the Zilliqa public blockchain. This will first provide simple, human-readable crypto wallet...

The Justice Department has been criticized on numerous occasions about its approach to criminal investigations and prosecutions.  In a recent decision, the chief judge in the Eastern District of New York criticized DOJ for “outsourcing” criminal investigations to outside counsel who conduct internal investigations under DOJ review.  I have long predicted that courts would eventually impose criminal procedural protections in the context of criminal internal...