The European Union Whistleblower Protection Directive imposes a broad set of requirements – to Member States and EU companies.  At the heart of the EU’s concern is to ensure that no employee (or business partner) should risk their job as a result of exposing corporate wrongdoing. Three-Tier Reporting System The EU Directive establishes a three-tiered reporting system.  Tier-1 applies to corporate internal reporting systems; Tier-2...

Global companies face a number of challenges and a myriad of regulatory obligations. In December 2019, the EU adopted a directive  to promote and protect persons who report violations of law.  The EU Whistleblower Directive was adopted in response to a series of scandals that were reported by whistleblowers, including the Panama Papers and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  An EU-sponsored study in 2017 reported that...

World Acceptance Corporation (“WAC”), a US-based consumer loan company, agreed to pay the SEC $21.7 million for FCPA violations in Mexico.  WAC’s cited violations covered the full gamut of FCPA violations, including bribery payments to government officials in Mexico, failure to keep accurate books and records and inadequate internal accounting controls. WAC engaged in an illegal scheme over a seven year period, from December 2010...

Companies do not operate in a vacuum.  Political and social forces have a dramatic impact on individuals who in turn constitute a company’s workforce.  We are witnessing significant political forces demanding justice for historical and engrained racism, sexism, injustice and discrimination.  A significant majority of Americans have embraced the Black Life’s Matter movement and with that have demonstrated an increased demand for social justice. This...

Effective Management of Employee Reporting Systems  August 12, 2020, Noon EST Sign Up Here. The compliance and ethics hotline represents one of the most integral tools available to a high-functioning Compliance Department.  Companies that implement and properly manage their reporting hotlines create a more positive and robust organizational culture.  In this webinar, Michael Volkov explains how to effectively manage your employee reporting system to create...

On May 1, 2020, Blue Bell pleaded guilty to shipping contaminated ice cream linked to a 2015 listeria outbreak and agreed to pay a fine of $19.5 million ($17.4 million criminal fine and $2.1 million to settle civil false claims act violations).  Blue Bell’s former CEO, Paul Kruse, was separately indicted and charged in seven separate counts for conspiracy and wire fraud for concealing from...

Bausch Health agreed to pay the SEC $45 million to settle Valeant Pharmaceuticals (former name) accounting fraud schemes.  Three former executives, former CEO Michael Pearson, CFO Howard Schiller and Controller Tanya Carro also settled with SEC.  Pearson agreed to pay a civil penalty of $250,000 and repaid Bausch $450,000 in compensation; Schiller agreed to pay a civil penalty of $100,000 and repaid Bausch $110,000 in...

It is hard to argue that Apple and Amazon do not have the resources to implement state-of-the-art OFAC compliance programs. After all, the two largest companies in the world should stand as beacons of compliance with the full support of senior management, robust compliance departments, and sophisticated automated systems to support their compliance efforts.  Apple Even the mighty can fall – Apple agreed to pay...

In the last two years, OFAC has brought four enforcement actions that focus on an organization’s “screening errors.” These include: American Express; (2) Cobham Metalics; (3) Apple; and (4) Amazon. In today’s posting, I will review American Express and Cobham Metalics. American Express On April 30, 2020, OFAC issued a Finding of Violation (with no penalty) against American Express Travel Services for violations of  the...

Here is another profound grasp of the obvious (for which I have a knack for delivering) – compliance and legal professionals can learn a number of lessons from individual enforcement actions.  In many cases, however, there is much more to the story than the headline or the list of so-called lessons learned. One category of enforcement actions is a perfect example – OFAC has brought...