Corporations are holding their respective breaths. SEC Chairperson Gary Gensler and his SEC colleagues are moving quickly to establish a regulatory framework for ESG disclosures. Climate change and diversity are the key issues surrounding this disclosure regime. The SEC initiative is easier said than done and presents a number of interesting issues that will have to be resolved. The SEC has invited comments on climate...
Over the last ten years, we have seen a steady increase in the coordination and cooperation among international prosecutors and law enforcement to prosecute bribery cases. In a recent example, the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against two former diplomats from Chad for taking a $2 million bribe from Griffiths Energy International, Inc., a Canadian energy company. The indictment was originally returned in 2019 and...
LRN and NAVEX Global release two important annual surveys. LRN issues a yearly report on ethics and compliance program effectiveness. NAVEX Global issues an important annual report on incident management trends based on its large database of hotline data. In this Episode, Michael Volkov review these two reports and the important ethics and compliance trends.
The Justice Department continues to pile up victories out of the world soccer FIFA federation bribery scandal. Julius Baer Group, the Swiss banker, agreed to a three-year, deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) and to pay nearly $80 million to resolve money laundering charges. Julius Baer laundered approximately $36 million in bribes between February 2013 and May 2015 in which sports marketing companies bribed soccer officials for...
The Department of Justice is starting to launch its FCPA enforcement profile after a brief lull in DOJ’s transition to a new administration. This enforcement lull occurred in the transition to the prior administration in 2016, and there is nothing to glean from it since it is a natural occurrence when a new Justice Department administration takes the reins of power. Last week, we had...
Andre Bywater and Jonathan Armstrong join us for a guest posting on the EU Speaking Up regime. André and Jonathan are lawyers with Cordery in London, United Kingdom, where they focus on compliance issues. André Bywater can be reached at [email protected] and Jonathan Armstrong can be reached at [email protected]. In 2019 the EU introduced new rules to enable whistleblowers to report about EU law irregularities...
The ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline demonstrated yet again the failure of government and business to anticipate cybersecurity issues through traditional tools – risk and vulnerability analysis, implementation of technology and planning to minimize a cyber event, and crisis response protocol. In the aftermath of this debacle, the public lined up to purchase gallons of gasoline because of a short-term shortage in gasoline. These scenes of panic...
Thank you to the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice. We honor their service, their courage, and their memories. Let us use this holiday to remind us all of our heroes and to honer them for their service.
When you look at the core of several major financial scandals, it is easy to point to problems with sales incentives and corporate culture. A company can rapidly grow due to the extraordinary performance of a company’s sales culture. In many cases, this sales culture creates real and significant risks for misconduct. To address such potential for misconduct, companies rely on internal controls to constrain...
The Justice Department’s criminal prosecution of the chicken producing industry took another significant turn. Step-by-step, the Antitrust Division is building a large and comprehensive criminal prosecution of a significant cartel. Claxton Poultry Farms refused to plead guilty and cooperate in the Antitrust Division’s sprawling criminal prosecution. Instead, Claxton Poultry Farms became the second producer to be charged and the first to be indicted rather than...
