Category: General

19 Jul, 2024

NAVEX’s Report on the State of Compliance: Positive News with Serious Gaps Noted

NAVEX delivers quality studies and important insights on ethics and compliance topics. In its 2024 State of Risk & Compliance, NAVEX provides a comprehensive report on current trends and practices involving risk and compliance management. The Report reflects the survey results from over 1,000 respondents global who influence or manage their organization’s risk and compliance programs. Over half of the respondents came from the United...

General

17 Jul, 2024

District Court Rejects Challenges to ITAR Criminal Charges

On July 9, 2024, District Judge David Hale in Kentucky denied motions to dismiss and motions to suppress filed by four defendants against a criminal case involving ITAR charges for illegal exports of sensitive, defense-related diagrams to Chinese companies. The Justice Department has charged Quadrant Magnetics LLC and three executives, Phil Pascoe, Scott Tubbs, and Monica Pascoe in a nine-count indictment for the illegal shipment...

General

16 Jul, 2024

SEC Expands Internal Controls Provision to Cover Cybersecurity Incidents and Reaches $2.1 Million Settlement with R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co.

In a significant expansion of internal controls enforcement, the SEC announced a $2.1 million settlement with R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. (“RRD”) for its handling of a 2021 ransomware attack and resulting disclosure failures. The settlement represents the SEC’s first application of its internal controls enforcement authority to include cybersecurity policies and procedures. In 2021, RRD suffered a cyber attack in which a threat actor...

General

16 Jul, 2024

OFAC Amends SDN and SSI List Entries to Incorporate Secondary Sanctions Warnings

On July 3, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) announced that it had amended entries for a multitude of entities sanctioned under the Treasury’s Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions regime. The updated designations for the entities—all of which are referenced on either OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (“SDN List”) or the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications...

General

11 Jul, 2024

Supreme Court Continues to Pare Back Criminal Laws

In a pair of rulings issued near the end of the last Term, Fischer v. United States and Snyder v. United States, the Supreme Court continued to cut back on the Justice Department’s interpretation and enforcement of criminal laws. The Supreme Court continues to display a distrust or basic misunderstanding of prosecutorial discretion (one Justice referencing during oral argument the old adage that a prosecutor...

General

9 Jul, 2024

BIS Announces Settlement Agreement with Indiana University Over Export Control Violations

On June 24, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) announced the settlement of an administrative enforcement action involving Indiana University of Bloomington (“Indiana University”) over multiple violations of export controls spanning a four-year period. According to the settlement agreement publicized by BIS, Indiana University illegally exported genetically modified strains of fruit flies containing transgenes of a certain subunit of...

General

9 Jul, 2024

Supreme Court Strikes Down Chevron Deference Rule

In a historic decision, the Supreme Court struck down the forty-year-old agency deference rule established in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. In two separate decisions, the Supreme Court ruled in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Commerce, the Court ruled that that § 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) gives courts the ultimate authority to interpret statutes...

General

2 Jul, 2024

Supreme Court Rules SEC’s In-House Adjudication Is Unconstitutional

In a recent decision, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to reject the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house administrative proceedings to adjudicate securities fraud claims. The Supreme Court specifically ruled that the defendant in a securities fraud case has a Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial when the SEC seeks civil penalties against the defendant. The Seventh...

General / Podcasts

30 Jun, 2024

Episode 327 — Another Look at Corporate Culture

LRN has issued another important report — in its latest report, The 2024 Benchmark of Ethical Culture Report, LRN has focused on the critical issue of corporate culture. LRN is a pacesetter and the leader in reliable studies on complex ethics and compliance issues. If not properly promoted or maintained, a defective culture can lead to serious misconduct, government investigation, reputational damage and collateral harm. ...

General

27 Jun, 2024

OFAC Settles with Mondo TV for $538k for Violation of North Korean Sanctions

OFAC has been busy and not so busy — what do I mean? OFAC is administering a complex set of coordinated sanctions against Russia, in close coordination with the EU and the UK. This is not a simple matter. In addition to this close coordinating responsibility, the United States and its allies are expanding the reach and bite of the sanctions to restrict Russia and...