Under Armour settled its long-pending SEC investigation by agreeing to pay $9 million surrounding misleading statements and practices relating to its revenue growth and uncertainties as to future growth. As part of the settlement, the SEC declined to bring charges against its CEO, Kevin Plank, and its CFO, David Bergman. The Justice Department inquiry appears to have lost steam since the middle of last year, and...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is gaining traction in the enforcement of cybersecurity and disclosure requirements.  The SEC has a lot on its plate these days – ESG, cybersecurity, and the traditional mix of enforcement cases.  While the new Chairman has been chomping at the bit, he stumbled out of the gate in his selection of a new enforcement director, Alex Oh, who eventually resigned...

The Antitrust Division has pushed bid-rigging and price-fixing prosecutions of government contractors.  It is long overdue – fraud enforcement has uncovered a number of bid-rigging and price-fixing schemes among government contractors.  To focus on this enforcement priority, DOJ created the Procurement Collusion Strike Force, which was initiated in November 2019, and consists of a multi-agency task force designed to uncover antitrust price-fixing schemes. The case...

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The scandal emanating from the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad fund (1MDB) continues to ripple through criminal law enforcement and criminal prosecutions.  Just to remind everyone, last year’s most significant FCPA enforcement case resulted in a $3 billion settlement with the Justice Department, the SEC and other agencies. Tim Leissner, the former Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia Chairman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to money laundering and FCPA...

Forgive me for going out on a limb here.  But this issue is fairly obvious.  A simple question: Should the Chief Compliance Officer be responsible for the Environmental, Social and Governance function? I have to set it up this way to give the dogmatic, binary, yes or no, answer, and then continue to outline a more nuanced discussion of the relationship between CCO and the...

In a far-reaching action, the Biden Administration elevated the global fight against corruption as a national security interest. In an Executive Memorandum, the Biden Administration made a strong statement against corruption, citing the devastating impact that corruption has on democratic institutions, democratic governments, economic development, and other public interest objectives. The Administration launched a robust inter-agency review of the anti-corruption battle, including increased international cooperation,...

LRN’s annual Ethics and Compliance Program Effectiveness Report is an important yearly event.  The report is often filled with important trends and observations.  For compliance officers, there is always important trends and information to review. As we know, however, 2021 was no ordinary year.  Instead, for many companies, the challenges of COVID-19 split the year into two – and LRN has followed suit.  Its first...

Sometimes it takes a public event to remind corporate risk managers about the importance of effective risk management.  While corporate risk management functions have become yet another “hot” topic or new-fangled response to corporate failures to prevent obvious risk, most organizations continue to wander in the world of reactive business planning rather than proactive prevention.  It has been fairly obvious for years that most corporate...