I am excited to announce the addition of Karin Sweigart as a new Senior Associate at The Volkov Law Group. When I launched the firm, I was committed to providing high-quality ethics and compliance, and enforcement defense services. With the help of my existing members we have been fortunate to grow and develop our services and capabilities. I am proud to announce that Karin Sweigart...
In these turbulent times in our country, there is a premium on the concepts of empathy and compassion. A successful leader in any organization has to demonstrate his or her ability to feel compassion. In any relationship, a person has to have the ability to see the issues or a perspective through the other person’s eyes (and ears and heart). Once you understand another person’s...
A compliance program is a continuously evolving process. The lifeblood of a compliance program is its ability to refresh itself, to incorporate new information and data, and adjust to meet new challenges. The culture and compliance loop requires discipline – a company refreshes its risk assessment, designs and implement new policies and procedures to address the risk, adopts new compliance controls, monitors the performance of...
Maybe I am missing something, but everyone is jumping on the culture bandwagon. Regulators like to speak about it; prosecutors like to emphasize it – everyone likes to talk about it as a way to encourage corporate leaders to commit to promoting an ethical culture. Let’s face it – talking about culture is an easy way to demonstrate your commitment to ethics and to compliance...
The Justice Department has released two important documents that provide guidance to compliance practitioners as to compliance program best practices: (1) The FCPA Guidance; and (2) The Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs. In combination, these two documents provide important compliance program guidance. In this episode, Michael Volkov discusses various issues related to ethics and compliance program best practices.
There are a lot of talented CEOs. Some remarkable leaders, innovators and eloquent spokespeople for their companies. In several recent experiences, I have been befuddled by some CEOs. When a CEO addresses a global ethics and compliance staff or has the opportunity to address a large staff or division meeting, the CEO should take the opportunity to reinforce the company’s culture and compliance program message. ...
Congratulations on your new position as the chief compliance officer. You successfully interviewed with the company, met the senior executive team and the audit committee chair, and negotiated a nice compensation package. You are feeling “pretty, pretty good” (ala Larry David) about your new job and looking forward to starting your new position. So, now, what do you do? My first question for you is...
Lawyers know about conflicts of interest. They face significant risks when handling clients and have to scrupulously follow principles surrounding conflict of interest. The two categories of conflicts of interest are defined as “appearance of a conflict,” and an “actual conflict.” Both can undermine the independence of an attorney who must zealously advocate on behalf of each individual client. Beyond lawyers, in the corporate business...
Sometimes a fraudster is just a fraudster – they are dangerous because they can manipulate without remorse or conscience. The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is a classic story of a manipulative CEO engaged in nothing more than a classic fraud. Holmes was once the Silicon Valley star who claimed to be a billionaire. Her fortunes started to unravel quickly in response...
Tom Fox, Matt Kelly, Jonathan Armstrong, Jay Rosen and myself recently recorded a new episode of Everything Compliance — Four of a Kind Edition. You can listen to it here. Everything Compliance is the only roundtable podcast in compliance, with four of the top compliance practitioners around. This week the gang returns to its four focused topics on its Four of a Kind edition. After...
