I am pleased to welcome Cristina Muehl as a guest contributor.  Cristina has provided a two-part series on third-party risk management relating to contract extensions and contract termination.  Cristina is a Senior Corporate Auditor at Delphi Corporation.  Her Linked In profile is here.  She can be reached at [email protected]. Risk Management is a constant theme for top management as it might make the difference between...

I find myself quibbling with compliance terms – hyper focus on small issues is not a positive trait. I often urge clients and colleagues to focus on issue of more significance and leave the smaller ones for another day. Hence, my recent criticism over “due diligence” policies and procedures for third party intermediaries. A more appropriate title is “risk management.” A due diligence inquiry of...

Last week, the Justice Department reported a guilty plea in the VW emissions scandal prosecution. By this one announcement, DOJ signaled that it is planning to build a bigger case against VW. Ironically, the Justice Department has exceeded the number of guilty pleas and cooperating witnesses in many of its high profile FCPA and AML/Sanctions cases. A senior VW engineer entered a guilty plea to...

Compliance professionals are familiar with the phrase “tone at the top,” but what exactly does it mean? Unlike other compliance program components, it cannot be easily formalized and implemented in a policy or procedure. Yet tone at the top is critical to building a culture of compliance – employees and managers do not live in a vacuum, they will reflect the importance of ethical business...

We always hear about the macroeconomic impact of corruption. Using large figures in the billions and even trillions (5 percent of global GDP) and painting catastrophic pictures of societal harm, anti-corruption advocates paint a terrifying picture of global, regional and specific country harm. These figures are fairly well established between world and regional development banks and provide ample motivation to join the fight against corruption....

Sometimes it takes a scandal to advance a policy or law enforcement cause. The Panama Papers scandal has given new life to financial regulators around the world who seek to impose customer due diligence requirements on banks and other key players in the financial industry. Knowing Your Customer is not only a basic requirement but is fast becoming a potential enforcement nightmare. In this era,...

Last week, the SEC added another pharmaceutical company to its list of FCPA violators when AstraZeneca agreed to a $5.5 million settlement with the SEC. AZ is now the 25th drug or medical device company to pay an FCPA penalty for violating the FCPA. AZ’s violations were not limited to China as a number of recent FCPA enforcement actions against drug/medical device companies, but included...

Joanna Belbey, who maintains a regular column on Forbes Magazine, interviewed me on the subject of social media, criminal activity and law enforcement. Here is the link to the article:  Crime and Social Media: Law Enforcement is Watching.   Joanna is the Social Media and Compliance Specialist at Actiance, Inc.  Follow her @belbey.  She is a leading expert on the intersection of social media and...

If you ask members of a corporate board or senior executives about the cost of an FCPA enforcement action, they will candidly acknowledge all of the costs – fines, penalties, and professional costs (e.g. legal, accounting, forensic). These are significant costs and nothing to sneeze or laugh at (however the expression goes). In a moment of candor the board members and C-Suite executives will confess...