Over the last couple weeks, I was recently featured in two videos highlighting the importance of building ethical corporate cultures. You can find them published on this online compliance community called Compliance Next. Here are links to two videos I recorded on the importance of corporate culture:Part 1 — HerePart 2 — Here In these videos, I consider why people slow down at school crossings. Is it to...
Businesses understand that their trade secrets are valuable assets. However, businesses fail to understand how vulnerable their trade secrets are to misappropriation and straight-out theft. The US Justice Department has been beefing up its enforcement in this area, relying on new and existing prosecution and investigation tools. Companies have to act with vigilance by protecting their confidential and sensitive trade secrets, and aggressively prosecuting civil...
A fundamental requirement for an effective ethics and compliance program is that it is supported by “adequate resources.” This does not mean a bare minimum requirement; nor is this requirement satisfied by flat-lining a compliance department’s annual budget. Someone is not getting the message straight – a compliance program has to evolve – that does not mean that it has to suck up more resources...
On February 27, 2019, the University of St. Thomas Law School is holding an open house on its Organizational Ethics and Compliance Programs. Two days later, on March 1, 2019, the University of St. Thomas Law School is holding a virtual information session. The University of St. Thomas offers a unique curriculum for professionals interested in ethics and compliance. The flyer for the two events...
For me, the year-end retrospectives have become a rite of passage. While there has been modest changes and trends in the enforcement arena, I am amazed each year at the pace at which compliance as a discipline and a profession continues to move forward. While there is much that is written about compliance and current or immediate trends, in reality, on the ground, compliance as...
Business operations can be riddled with inefficiencies. It is easy to spot them inside a company. The same rule applies to ethics and compliance programs. Given a specific global business configuration, ethics and compliance programs have to be designed efficiently to support the business. For some reason, a number of compliance programs have been built with two separate silos – one for trade compliance and...
Jessica Sanderson, Of Counsel, The Volkov Law Group, joins us for her initial posting on the False Claims Act. Jessica can be reached at [email protected]. On December 21, 2018, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) released its Fraud statistics showing $2.8 billion recovery under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) for 2018.[1] While this number is staggering, fiscal year 2018 FCA recoveries were down more than ½...
In a December 2018 enforcement settlement, the SEC and Brazil’s Centrais Elétricas Brasileiras S.A. (“Eletrobras”) agreed to violating books and records and internal accounting controls requirements and paid a $2.5 million penalty. (Here). DOJ declined to prosecute Eletrobras. Eletrobas stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The Brazilian government owns 51 percent of Eletrobras and appoints seven of eleven board members. The bribery...
As the Bible reminds us, “Beware of false prophets,” or in the compliance context, “Beware of false [measurements].” Compliance professionals have an obsession with benchmarking their compliance programs. Why are compliance officers so obsessed with such comparisons? Compliance is a function that, by definition, involves objective and subjective measurements. In its simplest form, compliance success is measured by the absence of a negative occurrence. Such...
Employee hotlines are – sorry about this – a “hot” topic these days in compliance. NAVEX Global’s recent study (here) confirmed the importance of an effective hotline system. Companies that implement robust and widely-used internal reporting systems are more effective in identifying and responding to potential problems. Such an impact improves overall business performance as measured by return on assets, fewer material lawsuits, lower litigation...
