I was honored to appear on Adam Turteltaub’s Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE’s) Podcast to discuss significant compliance events in 2022 and trends for 2023. Adam’s Introduction: A lot happened in compliance in 2022, with a large number of lessons for 2023. To sort it out we turned to Michael Volkov, of the Volkov Law Group and host of the Corruption, Crime & Compliance blog and podcast....
The Justice Department has been pushing its voluntary self-disclosure program and changes to its Corporate Enforcement Policy, in an attempt to increase FCPA enforcement cooperation. The Golden Ring for every company facing this situation is a declination with disgorgement. Only 17 companies have achieved that result. The latest beneficiary is Corsa Coal Corporation (“Corsa”), which cooperated with the Justice Department and resulted in the successful...
The Justice Department finally released its new policy to improve corporate preservation of data generated by executives and employees. In this new technology era, companies have had significant gaps in collecting and reviewing data generated by messaging applications, texting systems and emails. While many employees have been using personal devices for business purposes, a large number of companies have failed to apply strict BYOD policies...
The Justice Department is focusing with a laser beam on corporate incentives and disincentives. This truly is a remarkable initiative and companies should undertake their own holistic review of internal incentives and disincentives. For years, we have heard about corporate incentives to achieve earnings and how sales rewards can unintentionally distort compliance. As an important step, DOJ’s Criminal Division recently issued its new, three-year Pilot...
The Justice Department is rapidly pushing corporations to a new level of compliance. We are witnessing a watershed moment – DOJ is raising the bar on expectations surrounding corporate compliance programs. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret DOJ’s recent changes as limited to compliance compensation and preservation of internal communications data. The New Push on Human Resource Cooperation When considered together, the changes...
The end of the road for Roger Ng, the Goldman Sachs Investment Banker, who played a critical role in the Goldman Sachs 1 MDB Malaysia scandal, was not a pretty one. District Judge Margo Brodie gave Ng a severe sentence of ten (10) years’ imprisonment. At the sentencing hearing, Judge Brodie chastised Ng for participating in a massive scheme to steal billions of dollars from...
OFAC had a quiet start to the year – no enforcement actions but plenty of new and revised sanctions against Russia. OFAC started off March 2023 with a new enforcement action against Godfrey Phillips India, a tobacco manufacturer headquartered in India. Godfrey Phillips India (“GPI”) agreed to pay $332,500 for five violations of the North Korea Sanctions Program. GPI’s violations stemmed indirectly from GPI’s receipt...
As we have noted on numerous occasions, the U.S. Russia Sanctions and Export Control Program is unprecedented and a compliance challenge for all organizations. In another unprecedented action, the Justice Department and the Departments of Commerce and Treasury issued a Joint Compliance Note (“JCN”)on the importance of compliance with the Russia Sanctions and Export Control requirement, which provides important descriptions of red flags and tactics...
The Justice Department promised that it would flesh out compliance program incentives requirements and preservation of business data as part of its revision of its Corporate Enforcement Policy. In a pair of important speeches, DOJ officials, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite, previewed the new policies. Shortly after the speeches, the Justice Department released a new version of...
The Justice Department continues to push on white collar corporate enforcement, and the intersection of national security sanctions and export controls with corporate criminal enforcement. Last week, Lisa Monaco, DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General, and Kenneth Polite, Assistant Attorney General of DOJ’s Criminal Division, delivered one-two punches in separate speeches at the ABA White Collar Conference in Miami, Florida. In their speeches, DOJ announced new enforcement...
