The Justice Department’s sprawling and successful prosecution of bribery and money laundering surrounding PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned energy company, shows no signs of letting up. DOJ’s prosecutions began in 2015, and with the recent announcement of two new defendants, DOJ’s scorecard has reached a total of 21 defendants, 15 of whom have pleaded guilty. Given PDVSA’s reputation for corruption, which is well earned (or as I...
Webinar: Best Practices for Investigation Sexual Misconduct Allegations in the #MeToo Era March 26, 2019, 12 Noon EST SIGN UP HERE The corporate governance landscape is littered with companies that have suffered major legal and reputational damage as a result of failure to promote and protect a safe workplace environment. Companies have failed to hold offenders accountable for sexual misconduct and violation of applicable legal...
OFAC is definitely off to a fast start this year – it recently announced its fourth enforcement action for 2019. So far, OFAC has collected over $7 million in civil penalties. While this may not appear to be a lot of money in civil penalties, it is important to remember the consequences of an OFAC settlement and scrutiny for future violations, restrictions on exports, and...
In January 2019, the Justice Department brought an interesting FCPA prosecution involving a Hawaii-based businessman, Frank James Lyon, and Master Halbert, a government official from Micronesia. DOJ’s prosecution was interesting for two significant reasons – first, it was another example of DOJ enforcement efforts against the payor of the bribe for violating the FCPA and the recipient of the bribe, the foreign official, for money...
The Department of Justice has launched two separate criminal cases against Huawei China, the controversial Chinese telecommunications equipment provider. For years, US government officials have questioned the ownership, control and practices of Huawei, claiming that it is owned by the Chinese government and acting as an agent for Chinese interests. At the end of January, the Justice Department announced two separate indictments against Huawei, and...
The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”) was a watershed moment in data and privacy compliance. The new law applies to all companies and persons within the European Union and the European Economic Area. Since its effective date, May 25, 2018, enforcement of the new law has begun. In the first year, compliance and enforcement practitioners have identified important issues and trends for companies and...
OFAC continues to pile up enforcement actions for sanctions violations. In yet another example of a failure of companies to address compliance, to follow up on compliance and to ensure ultimate compliance, AppliChem, a German company agreed to pay $5.5 million for 304 violations of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations during the time period between May 2012 and February 2016. Specifically, AppliChem engaged in 304...
A basic compliance program control, which is often overlooked (or assumed to exist), is the requirement that a chief compliance officer and/or chief legal officer have the authority to stop a specific contract or business transaction. To simplify this statement, compliance and legal have to approve certain business transactions before they can proceed. If a compliance officer or legal officer is consulted just for “advice,”...
Noah Smith, Associate at The Volkov Law Group, rejoins us for an interesting blog posting on the compliance challenges for financial institutions and other businesses involved in legal marijuana transactions. Noah can be reached at [email protected] The quasi-legal status of marijuana in today’s United States is raising serious questions about federalism and enforcement for U.S. financial institutions. It is well known that marijuana is still...
The corporate world has been rocked by major governance failures surrounding #MeToo incidents and complaints. Recently, Google suffered global walkouts by employees who were upset by Google’s payment of lucrative severance packages to senior executives forced to resign because of sexual misconduct issues, and a culture of sexual misconduct that included 48 sexual misconduct incidents resulting in the departure/termination of employees. Companies have to address...
Board and Fraud – a Jonathan T. Marks Blog
