How do you establish tone at the top when the CEO really does not care? What if the Chief Compliance Officer cannot get the CEO’s attention? CCOs face real challenges when the CCO does not have his or her star actor or actress to promote the company’s ethical culture. If you can imagine filming The Godfather without Marlon Brando, then you can imagine what a...

Tuesday, April 21, 2015, 12 Noon EST – 1 PM Register Here Third-party risks continue to weigh heavily on global companies. DOJ and the SEC focus FCPA investigations and enforcement actions on third-party misconduct. Companies need to design and implement cost-effective third party strategies. Whether your company has 100 or 10,000 third parties, proactive strategies can reduce risk and ensure efficient allocation of compliance resources....

“Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.”  — Will Rogers ” Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”  — John F. Kennedy The compliance profession continues to evolve and grow.  More lawyers and law students are seeking knowledge and training in the field of ethics...

Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything. – Walt Whitman A company’s character includes avoiding the appearance of, or actual, conflicts of interest. Compliance professionals need to pay more attention to conflicts of interest. In some instances, companies have not even adopted conflict of interest compliance policies.  Some companies have a mere mention of the principle in their code of...

I hate to write a negative column. It is contrary to my nature and perspective. It is easy to complain. It is far more difficult to come up with practical solutions. We all know colleagues who love to complain but do nothing about the problems they complain about. Eventually, a complainer loses value in an organization and they end up having little influence. Having said...

The FCPA crystal ball is constantly shifting. Sometimes patterns emerge and trends become evident.   FCPA enforcement is fairly consistent with occasional blips.  What becomes trend setting often becomes the new norm.  Just look at the changes in Schedule C, and the compliance program requirements.  Look at the Schedule Cs from five years ago, and compare them to the Schedule Cs used now.  There have...

Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life. – Mark Twain The SEC enforces its books and records and internal controls provisions, most of which involve non-FCPA violations. The Justice Department has responsibility for prosecuting criminal violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions. The interesting issue for both the SEC and the Justice...

When you review the actual law surrounding books and records and internal controls, you wonder to yourself what took the Justice Department and the SEC so long to discover the full power of the provisions. My explanation for this is pretty basic – when you have companies’ self-disclosing bribery violations, along with books and records violations, there is no need to develop ” “new” enforcement...

I was recently inspired by Tom Fox’s excellent writings on the COSO 2013 framework, and his examination of internal controls issues – see here, here, and here. Today, I begin my own series on internal controls but from a slightly different perspective. The Justice Department and the SEC are evolving FCPA enforcement strategies and theories. The SEC’s evolution is not so significant but its realization...

The controversy surrounding Deferred Prosecution Agreements (“DPAs”) and Non- Prosecution Agreements (“NPAs”) continues to boil. In response to continuing criticism that the Justice Department is using DPAs and NPAs to coddle or let companies off the hook, the Justice Department has been channeling former President Regan’s famous speech in Berlin when he told Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall. Criminal Division AAG Caldwell...