Everyone likes to focus on the BRIC countries.  Article after article focuses on the risks in the BRIC countries.  Africa poses the delicate mix of opportunity and corruption risks.  Many of the FCPA enforcement actions have focused on Africa, particularly Nigeria, Angola and Kenya.  Many African countries are experiencing significant economic growth especially in the oil and extractive industries.  Corruption risks are high because of...

I am not anticipating that the Justice Department’s soon-to-be-released guidance is going to satisfy anyone.  However, DOJ has an opportunity to do some good, and I expect they will take it.  I have the utmost respect for DOJ, especially the career prosecutors (I was one for 17 years), and I know they will try and do the right thing. There are a lot of issues...

In the aftermath of the New York Times investigative reporting, one thing is clear — Big is not necessarily better.  What do I mean by that?  You can take all the compliance resources you want, throw them at a problem and come up with zilch on the compliance front. The message for Fortune 100 companies is loud and clear.  You may have wonderful compliance programs,...

It is difficult enough to serve on a corporate board.  It is not a job for the weak stomached.  Corporate boards have faced unprecedented risks.  Aside from general board duties, regulators are increasing scrutiny of board committees, especially audit committees. In the early 2000s, audit committees were under the microscope after a series of corporate fraud scandals resulted in Sarbanes-Oxley reforms, focusing on internal controls,...

The FCPA paparazzi has a standard list of anti-corruption risks: government interactions, third-party due diligence, gifts and entertainment, and mergers and acquisitions/joint ventures.  Notice that charitable giving is not included on that list of greatest hits.   Gifts to charities can be a clever disguise of an improper payment to a government official or a relative of a government official.  Like gifts and entertainment, a...

The FCPA paparazzi is at it again.   FCPA bloggers and white collar defense counsel are hyper-ventilating on the future of DOJ’s criminal FCPA prosecutions.  Exagerration is now the commodity of marketing on the blogosphere.    The government’s dismissal of the Africa Sting cases is a setback to the government’s FCPA enforcement program but it is not an event which will in any way slow the government’s criminal enforcement...

If you look closely at the list of FCPA enforcement actions, a large percentage of FCPA violations have focused on illegal payments made to secure customs clearance.  This is not surprising.  The equities facing a company can be very risky – customs clearance is a bottleneck critical to the company; and foreign customs officials know that they have leverage to extract illegal payments from a...

I have been reluctant to join the debate over a corporate compliance defense to FCPA violations.  I would like to count Tom Fox, Mike Koehler and Howard Sklar among my friends.  I also have a lot of respect for them.  They each have weighed in on the issue of a corporate compliance defense to an FCPA violation.  At the risk of stirring the pot, I thought...

Just a reminder that my book is still available on Amazon!!!   My mentor and friend, Judge Stanley Sporkin, the ‘father of the FCPA,’ wrote the foreword. “Michael Volkov’s book is a compilation of articles on a number of subjects important to advising clients how to stay out of trouble. He is a prolific writer and I can say without question, we have not heard the last...

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