Category: General

7 Feb, 2016

SciClone Pharmaceuticals: A Textbook Case of FCPA Violations for Gifts, Meals, Entertainment and Travel

The Securities and Exchange Commission continues its steady march as the prominent FCPA enforcement agency against corporations. The Justice Department has not brought any enforcement actions this year and continues to reevaluate its FCPA compliance program. In an interesting enforcement action, the SEC settled a case with SciClone Pharmaceuticals for $12.8 million for violations occurring in China. Unlike many other SEC enforcement actions, the SEC’s...

General

3 Feb, 2016

Digging Into Your Internal Controls

Corruption risks follow the money. If a company has effective controls over money, then the company has a good chance of mitigating corruption risks. A key indicator of a company’s internal controls is to ask if the company has suffered any significant fraud in the last five years. If your company has experienced a high fraud rate, the company’s controls may be weak and corruption...

General

2 Feb, 2016

The Modern UK Slavery Act: Supply Chain Risk Management

The United Kingdom has a number of interesting ideas and policy initiatives. The UK Bribery Act was a strong statement against corruption, but remains unenforced. The United Kingdom has enacted the Modern Slavery Act, which imposes a number of new requirements on global companies. The Modern Slavery Act is modeled after California’s Transparency in Supply Chains Act, but is much broader in application. The Modern...

General

1 Feb, 2016

Broadcat: A New and Innovative Tool to Promote the Compliance Message

Ricardo Pellafone, a long-time compliance professional, has created a new and exciting company — Broadcat (link here) — to provide new and innovative products to promote the compliance message. I asked Ricardo to contribute a post on his new venture. What’s the best kind of compliance information? The kind your executives and board of directors will listen to. As an in-house practitioner, your wheelhouse is...

General

31 Jan, 2016

Corruption and Foreign Government Institutions

The FCPA can create a very one-sided view of corruption. The bribe payer is punished and most times the recipient is not. The Justice Department has used creative approaches to ensnare recipients as in the Direct Partners enforcement action, but for the most part the recipients are not punished nor even publicly identified. Bribery demands can occur in a variety of contexts; sometimes they are...

General

27 Jan, 2016

Focusing on Internal Investigations

A speak up culture is an important component of a company’s commitment to organizational justice. All of the pieces of an internal justice system have to fit together and are interdependent. When one part does not work, the whole system does not work. A robust internal investigation system is a critical component of organizational justice. Companies often pull together the basic components of an internal...

General

26 Jan, 2016

Learning from Schlumberger’s Mistakes: Doing Business Under Iran General License H

Lauren Connell, Managing Associate at The Volkov Law Group, rejoins us for a posting on sanctions compliance. She can be reached at [email protected]. Implementation Day has been hailed as a new stage in Iran-US relations. There has been significant media coverage of how sanctions are being lifted, with various outlets suggesting that Iran is now “open for business.” In reality, that is far from true....

General

25 Jan, 2016

Beneficial Ownership: Sanctions and FCPA Compliance

Financial institutions have been pushing back hard on FinCEN’s proposal to require banks, investment banks and other financial institutions to identify beneficial owners of account holders. As time goes on the impact of FinCEN’s proposal is diminishing. Why? In general, businesses have other reasons to secure beneficial ownership information. One key concern is sanctions compliance. To the extent an account holder engages in international transactions,...

General

24 Jan, 2016

Prosecuting Individuals – The Coming Wave

When the Justice Department adopts new strategies and policies, it takes time for results. Rest assured, however, that the Justice Department’s focus on individual accountability is going to have real and significant consequences. The political blowback to DOJ’s prosecution strategies started with the failure to indict or seriously investigate senior executives connected to financial institutions involved in the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009. The...

General

21 Jan, 2016

Fraud and Bribery: Segregation of Duties

Some things go together. Chocolate chip cookies and milk, Hepburn and Tracy, Lewis and Martin (I know, I am showing my age, but you get the point), and many other favorite combinations. So, you get the point – in the world of anti-bribery compliance, and another in my series of profound grasps of the obvious – fraud and bribery go hand in hand. One of...