On February 27, 2019, the University of St. Thomas Law School is holding an open house on its Organizational Ethics and Compliance Programs. Two days later, on March 1, 2019, the University of St. Thomas Law School is holding a virtual information session. The University of St. Thomas offers a unique curriculum for professionals interested in ethics and compliance. The flyer for the two events...
Webinar: Best Practices for Vendor Risk Profiling February 6, 2019, 10 AM PST/1 PM EST Sign Up HERE Third-party vendors expose your organization to risk. How you manage your vendors—from onboarding, to identifying and scoring risk, to ongoing monitoring—has a huge impact on your business. Multi-factor modeling and risk profiling is crucial to minimizing your risk and staying ahead of regulators and third-party-related reputational damage. But how do you...
For me, the year-end retrospectives have become a rite of passage. While there has been modest changes and trends in the enforcement arena, I am amazed each year at the pace at which compliance as a discipline and a profession continues to move forward. While there is much that is written about compliance and current or immediate trends, in reality, on the ground, compliance as...
Business operations can be riddled with inefficiencies. It is easy to spot them inside a company. The same rule applies to ethics and compliance programs. Given a specific global business configuration, ethics and compliance programs have to be designed efficiently to support the business. For some reason, a number of compliance programs have been built with two separate silos – one for trade compliance and...
Jessica Sanderson, Of Counsel, The Volkov Law Group, joins us for her initial posting on the False Claims Act. Jessica can be reached at [email protected]. On December 21, 2018, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) released its Fraud statistics showing $2.8 billion recovery under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) for 2018.[1] While this number is staggering, fiscal year 2018 FCA recoveries were down more than ½...
The SEC and the Justice Department closed their respective 2018 books with resolution of three separate enforcement actions: Polycom, Eletrobras and Two Former Officers of Panasonic Avionics. In this episode, Michael Volkov reviews and discusses important lessons learned from these three separate FCPA enforcement actions.
In a December 2018 enforcement settlement, the SEC and Brazil’s Centrais Elétricas Brasileiras S.A. (“Eletrobras”) agreed to violating books and records and internal accounting controls requirements and paid a $2.5 million penalty. (Here). DOJ declined to prosecute Eletrobras. Eletrobas stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The Brazilian government owns 51 percent of Eletrobras and appoints seven of eleven board members. The bribery...
As the Bible reminds us, “Beware of false prophets,” or in the compliance context, “Beware of false [measurements].” Compliance professionals have an obsession with benchmarking their compliance programs. Why are compliance officers so obsessed with such comparisons? Compliance is a function that, by definition, involves objective and subjective measurements. In its simplest form, compliance success is measured by the absence of a negative occurrence. Such...
Employee hotlines are – sorry about this – a “hot” topic these days in compliance. NAVEX Global’s recent study (here) confirmed the importance of an effective hotline system. Companies that implement robust and widely-used internal reporting systems are more effective in identifying and responding to potential problems. Such an impact improves overall business performance as measured by return on assets, fewer material lawsuits, lower litigation...
The Volkov Law Group is pleased to announce the addition of Jessica Sanderson to the firm. Jessica has a wealth of compliance and enforcement defense experience. We look forward to introducing her to new and existing clients. Jessica Sanderson, Of Counsel, has more than 20 years of experience in a number of areas, including complex civil litigation, white-collar defense and regulatory and securities enforcement under...
