For those companies dedicated to compliance, the first and most critical step is a commitment to empower its compliance office.  A company must assign adequate personnel and allocate adequate resources to fulfill its mission.  An effective compliance officer must be regarded as equal to, or even senior to, the company’s Chief Financial Officer or General Counsel.  Gone are the days when compliance offices are a...

Join us for an Ethisphere Webinar:   Anti-Corruption Compliance for Private Equity & Hedge Funds:  February 7, 2012, 1 PM to 2 PM   The Justice Department (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are committed to aggressive enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and anti-corruption laws. In 2010, they launched an enforcement initiative against private equity and hedge funds. The implications of...

Forgive me for asking this question but why do consultants and accountants separate the concepts of fraud and bribery.  To me, bribery is a form of fraud.  Where there is fraud there is likely to be bribery – company actors are bribing others or company actors are taking kickbacks for contracts with the company.  Both of these schemes involve fraud.  One of them is prohibited...

One of the more interesting trends in FCPA enforcement is the DOJ’s willingness to prosecute foreign companies and individuals.  Some may argue that DOJ needs to focus on US companies which engage in foreign bribery and leave the prosecution of foreign companies to foreign prosecutors in their respective countries.  Foreign companies become even more concerned when it comes to the prosecution of foreign officers and...

Talk about seeing the forest from the trees – during the same week that Judge Hughes granted the defense motion for judgment of acquittal in the O’Shea case, the Justice Department announced a $56 million settlement in the Marubeni case, and Biomet disclosed it was planning on an FCPA settlement in the $30 million range.  Late last year, two major companies announced they were close...

If your company operates in China, I have one piece of “free” advice – conduct an anti-corruption audit and do it now. Almost one-third of the FCPA criminal cases involve bribery in China.  The scenarios are very familiar: a US company enters into a joint venture with a Chinese partner, or a US company establishes (or acquires) a Chinese subsidiary.  Bribery is built into the...

Sometimes too much of a good thing is a bad thing.  We spend so much time advocating for compliance programs that we forget to remind companies that sometimes too much compliance is not a good thing.  What do I mean by this? Simplicity is a good thing.  The true measure of intelligence is the ability of someone to take a complex subject and explain it...

It is no surprise that corporate boards are paying more attention to risk management.  It is about time but change is slow to come in corporate board rooms.  The reasons for the change in corporate attitude is not just an unprecedented aggressive enforcement environment.  It reflects the confluence of public attitudes toward business in the wake of the financial crisis and economic meltdown, political forces...

You win some and you lose some.  A prosecutor or litigator who tells you his tor her trial record is not a real litigator, they are an insecure litigator.  The fact they keep track is a tip off – time to run away and find someone else.  The great litigators win cases and they lose cases.  If they tell you otherwise, do not hire them. ...