Everyone’s talking about the DOJ going soft on crime. I want to push back on that narrative because I think it’s incomplete and, honestly, a little dangerous if compliance officers believe it. Yes, traditional FCPA and bribery prosecutions have slowed, but look at where the resources actually went. Trade enforcement is exploding. Sanctions enforcement is aggressive and getting more aggressive by the month. And here’s...

A significant shift in U.S. enforcement policy is underway, and most companies operating in Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere in Latin America have not yet fully absorbed what it means for them. Over the past year and a half, the government has moved major cartels and organized criminal networks onto the same legal footing as international terrorist organizations. That reclassification is not a symbolic gesture. It...

When it comes to DOJ enforcement, the pendulum swings, and it always returns. Don’t let it knock you off your feet. I’ve been watching the headlines, and so have you. Fewer corporate guilty pleas, non-prosecution agreements for Alibaba and Eagle Bank, charges dropped against Boeing and Halkbank from Turkey. The word from Main Justice is: hold individuals accountable, go easier on companies. I get why...

The guilty plea entered by Estonian national Andrey Shevlyakov is a useful reminder of just how far the Justice Department is willing to reach, geographically and procedurally, to prosecute export control evasion tied to the Russian military. Shevlyakov, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit export violations, has agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine and faces up to 40 years in prison for his...

A clear pattern has emerged in Justice Department corporate enforcement over the past several months, and it is worth compliance officers and general counsel taking notice: companies are being charged far less often, even in cases where prosecutors believed executives or managers were personally involved in the underlying wrongdoing, and that reduced corporate exposure has not been matched by a corresponding increase in individual prosecutions....

In the compliance world, no news is not good news. Let me ask you a question every CCO should be asking right now: Are your employees actually reporting and using your hotline to report legitimate concerns? Too many compliance officers look at a quiet hotline and breathe a sigh of relief. No calls, no complaints. Must mean everything’s fine. I’m here to tell you that’s...

In my last post, I made the affirmative case for CCO empowerment — a direct reporting line to the CEO and a dotted line to the audit committee. Today I want to address the disturbing counter-trend: companies moving compliance back under the general counsel, often justified as cost discipline or organizational simplification. Make no mistake about what this movement represents. It is a retreat from...

Parts 1 and 2 of this series covered the terms of The Scoular Company’s deferred prosecution agreement and the mechanics of the bribery scheme itself, a six-year pattern of $2,000 payments per train, dressed up as reinspection fees, paid through customs brokers to keep contaminated agricultural shipments moving across the U.S.-Mexico border. In this final installment, we draw out the practical lessons for compliance officers,...

In Part 1 of this series, we outlined the terms of The Scoular Company’s deferred prosecution agreement and how DOJ applied its Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy to the case. In Part 2, we go deeper into the facts themselves, because the mechanics of this scheme, and the specific control gaps that allowed it to run for six years, are exactly the kind of...

The Justice Department’s foreign bribery resolution with The Scoular Company, an Omaha, Nebraska-based agricultural supply chain company, is one of the more unusual FCPA cases in recent memory. It did not arise from a company chasing a government contract or a licensing decision abroad. It arose from routine cross-border logistics, corn and other agricultural shipments moving from the United States into Mexico, and a bribery...