The New Year will bring a new focus on corporate board performance.  The aggressive enforcement environment has had a dramatic impact on corporate ethics and compliance.  CCOs have been empowered and gained independence. Reform at the corporate board level remains lackluster.  Shareholder activism has risen but there has been little change at the corporate board level. The next five years will see a surge in...

Webinar: January 23, 2014, 12 Noon EST Interviews and Internal Investigations Sign Up Here The ability to conduct an effective internal investigation is critical for every organization. The interviews of witnesses are the most important aspect of any internal investigation.There is a “skill” to conducting an interview. For a company facing a government investigation, it is important to collect information as quickly as possible to...

The compliance field has had an incredible five years.  From backwater offices and responsibilities, CCOs are now taking a seat at senior management tables to provide important risk-based assessments and policies to enhance ethics and compliance and avoid government investigations and shareholder lawsuits. The compliance field is at an important point.  Compliance professionals have to deliver.  Compliance officers need to develop effective strategies and tools....

I try to avoid New Year’s resolutions because I usually do not stick to them.  But the process is good as a way to organize your focus and energy. For Chief Compliance Officers, it is more important than ever to reexamine where they are professionally and set some goals for the year.  CCOs are quickly rising to the top of the professional ladder.  There is...

When it comes to predicting ethics and compliance trends and events for the new year, I admit I needed some help.  So I reached out to two leading ethics and compliance specialists in the industry – Donna Boehme (here) and Michael Scher (here), both of whom are well known and well regarded for their acumen and expertise in the ethics and compliance field. Working together,...

Happy New Year!!  For FCPA enforcement, 2013 was a banner year.  It is hard to envision a more successful year for FCPA prosecutors.  The new year — 2014 — will continue with aggressive FCPA enforcement, prosecutions of individuals (retrospective and prospective cases, with some interesting twists along the way.  Each year is different in one way or another. The year 2013 was incredibly successful for...

Webinar: January 7, 2014, 12 Noon EST FCPA Enforcement: A Review of 2013 and Trends for 2014 Sign Up Here FCPA enforcement returned in 2013 with a vengeance as the Department of Justice led the way in criminal enforcement against individuals and corporate settlements of a number of major cases. The year 2013 stands as one of DOJ’s strongest years since 2010, and the next...

You can label this posting as another in the series of profound grasps of the obvious.  Chief Compliance Officers rely on public relations skills – they have to convince their organizations to embrace a culture of ethics and compliance. The key communications challenge is to move beyond compliance to protect against a government enforcement actions.  A message of fear of government enforcement is not a...

To continue a “tradition” on Corruption Crime and Compliance, I like to end the year with recognition of the “person of the year,” referring to the institution which has had the most impact in the enforcement and compliance arena. Two years ago, I wrote a column naming the Chief Compliance Officer as the person of the year; last year, I named the whistleblower the person...

The United States spends over $2.81 trillion dollars on health care annually and generates billions of claims from millions of health care service and product providers. The vast majority of these providers of services and products bill multiple payers, both private and public. In 2012, the Medicare program covered more than 49 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries at an estimated cost of $555 billion, and...