UBS Group agreed to pay a combined $15 million penalty to the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”)and the SEC for regulatory deficiencies in its anti-money laundering compliance program.  UBS is required to pay $5 million to the Treasury Department; $5 million to the SEC and another $5 million to FinCEN. UBS’ broker-dealer unit, UBS Financial Services, Inc. (“UBSFS”), violated the Bank Secrecy...

The Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (“OFAC”) recently announced a settlement against Cobham Holdings (and its former subsidiary Aeroflex/Metelics, Inc. (“Metelics”, a software company) for $87,507 for violations of OFAC’s Ukraine-Russia sanctions program.  (OFAC announcement here). Metelics violated the Ukraine-Russia sanctions program on three occasions between July 31, 2014 and January 15, 2015,  by selling telecommunications and computer software (3,400 switch limiters;...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced a number of modifications to its policies governing prosecution of corporations for criminal and civil violations of law.  In 2017, DOJ announced its FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy.  Over the last year, DOJ expanded this policy to apply to non-FCPA corporate violations, as well as mergers and acquisitions.  In addition, DOJ recently announced the adoption of an Anti-Piling On...

Join Tom Fox, Katie Smith and me on December 18, 2018 at 11am Mountain Time during a dynamic webinar reviewing the  top FCPA enforcement actions of the year. Sign Up HERE More importantly, what does it all mean for the compliance professional going forward? How can companies mitigate third-party risks to avoid enforcement actions like the $585 million criminal penalty given to Société Générale or the $137.4 penalty levied...

Technology and computer analytics are important tools in the fight against fraud.  But it is not the magic and exclusive bullet.  Fraud is committed by humans and investing in the human element, while difficult to measure, is an important part of every fraud prevention strategy. The fraud triangle is an essential framework for understanding fraudster behavior.  The fraud triangle is no panacea but it is...

The battle against fraud is evolving and technology is providing new and important tools to detect and prevent fraud. Companies are using a variety of techniques and include: continuous monitoring; email monitoring; anomaly detection; pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. Data mining and statistical analysis can be helpful in detecting fraud.  By using sophisticated data mining tools, companies can search millions of transactions to spot patterns...

For the love of money is the root of all evil – 1 Timothy 6:10, King James Version, The Bible Corporate bribery requires money.  How is that for something obvious. Companies face a variety of threats – one enduring threat is the risk of fraud or theft.  Unfortunately, employee fraud is all too common. PWC’s 2018 Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey reported that “only...

The FCPA Guidance continues to inform compliance practitioners on compliance best practices. Issued in 2012, the FCPA Guidance provides important information concerning a number of compliance functions and risks.  The FCPA Guidance includes important discussions about legal intent, due diligence, successor liability and other issues, which can be used to establish important safe harbors for an effective ethics and compliance program. In this episode, Michael...

Over the last twenty years, we have seen a fundamental re-orientation in compliance.  I would argue that as the compliance profession has expanded and taken on greater space and responsibility in the corporate governance world, a fresh perspective has developed. In my view, compliance is devoting more attention, and properly so, to the idea of “proactive” compliance.  This is in contrast to “reactive” compliance.  What...

Maybe I am getting slow in my old age – or just maybe I am losing a step or two.  We all face that inevitable question – and perhaps, for me, it is best illustrated when I come up with yet another in my series of profound grasps of the obvious. Here is one of my favorites – I call it the 60-60 problem.  If...