The Justice Department and the financial regulatory agencies have sent a strong message of enforcement, suggesting that financial institutions are not adequately implementing AML compliance controls. The message was heard all the way up to corporate boardrooms.  The question now is what is the industry going to do to improve their compliance programs.  This is not rocket science, and the financial industry knows full well...

At first glance, India is a country of incredible economic opportunity.  India’s GDP is slated to continue to grow five (5) percent each year.  It has the third biggest economy in the world, below the US and China. India’s ranking is 92nd in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.  Foreign investment in India is nearly $12 billion annually but has been falling in the last...

As compliance professionals enjoy the rise of their profession, lawyers are sensing a decline in importance.  I am hearing from compliance professionals a new and disturbing trend – companies are requiring compliance professionals to be trained attorneys. Since I am a lawyer, I know I should just repeat the party line and argue that compliance professionals have to be lawyers.  I cannot come to the...

Webinar: April 15, 2014, 12 Noon EST Tailoring Your Anti-Corruption Program to Your Risk Assessment  Sign Up Here Department of Justice and the SEC have emphasized the importance of designing an anti-corruption compliance program based on a company’s risk assessment. An effective program has to be tailored to the specific risks identified in the risk assessment. Companies that ignore this fundamental requirement are at increased...

The FCPA is a broad statute.  As written, it covers a number of situations, and creates twists and turns in analysis. One of the more challenging areas to navigate is the issue of joint ventures. When you bring two companies together to operate jointly, there are a number of difficult issues to analyze. First, assuming there is an adequate business justification for a joint venture...

FCPA practitioners can suffer from myopia – a narrow focus on FCPA risks.  The FCPA does not apply to company actors who take bribes in exchange for awarding contracts to companies.  That situation is commonly referred to as “kickbacks.” Taking a step back, companies face a major triad of economic crime risks.  We all know about companies paying bribes to foreign officials.  There are two...

The old adage has taken hold in the compliance field – “Be careful what you ask for, you just may get it.” Compliance professionals are finally getting the respect they deserve.  They still have a long way to go.  General Counsels, Internal Auditors, Human Resource professionals are not going to accept the elevation of compliance professionals lying down. The corporate world is filled with back-stabbing,...

You can learn a lot from other people’s mistakes.  We all know that. In our FCPA world, we have a new poster child for blundering – Alstom.  The handwriting is on the wall – as time goes on, the Justice Department is building a bigger and bigger FCPA case against Alstom.  One of my favorite Dylan lyrics applies with full force – “You don’t need...

One of the hardest issues for compliance professionals is encouraging employees to raise concerns about ethics and compliance issues.  It has become even more difficult when the government establishes whistleblower programs offering financial rewards for employees to tell the government about the problems. Employee surveys provide important and interesting information.  A recent survey by CEB (here) found that only five percent of employee concerns are...