Believe it or not, life principles can be used in compliance, especially in due diligence. I always tell my kids that life has a way of setting priorities. As you get older, life becomes simpler and your priorities become clearer. Now watch this transition – the same goes for due diligence, not the age part but the priorities part. Once you assemble information and data...
Integrity has no need of rules. – Albert Camus Corporate decision-making ignores important principles and sometimes, common sense. With the increase in corporate compliance programs, corporate boards and senior executives need to take a moment to address one important issue – the importance of creating an ethical culture. For some reason, corporate boards and leaders like to focus on the tangible aspects of ethics and...
NAVEX Global, Regulatory Data Corporation, and The Volkov Law Group invite you to attend a half-day meeting to discuss Third Party Risk Management: New and Innovative Strategies, on November 5, 2015, 12:30 pm to 6 pm in Silicon Valley. Please Sign Up HERE. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. The half-day forum will bring together senior ethics and compliance professionals for a...
In the wreckage of a corporate FCPA enforcement action, a company has to answer two important questions. First, how did the conduct occur without senior executives and the Board learning or suspecting that such conduct was occurring or could occur? Second, how did the wrongdoers obtain access to the money needed to fund the bribery scheme? I know these two questions are fairly obvious, but...
A Chief Compliance Officer has a number of important relationships to maintain in an organization. Aside from the support of senior level executives, the CCO has to build an effective working relationship with the board and the relevant board committee responsible for ethics and compliance. From an operational standpoint, a CCO has to use the board to advance an issue when frustrated by senior management....
I have a lot of pet peeves, especially when it comes to lawyers and compliance professionals. Do not worry — this is a not a column about all of my pet peeves; I would never bore you with all those issues. My current pet peeve in the compliance field is the expression “compliance fatigue.” I am not a paranoid person but anyone who claims that...
The Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control continues to ramp up sanctions enforcement. Even with the likely relaxation of the Iran and Cuba sanctions, OFAC has been continuing its aggressive enforcement program. Thus far, OFAC has collected approximately $270 million in civil penalties, and participated in several major criminal investigations, including Commerzbank and Schlumberger. Commerzbank agreed to pay a total of $1.45 billion...
You have just been hired as the new Chief Compliance Officer of a global company operating in over 80 countries, including numerous high-risk corruption countries. You have no staff and have been given a budget to hire 5 full-time professionals, support staff, and technology, if reasonably priced. When you look into the existing compliance program, you realize that everything is a mess. There are no...
The SEC is having a good year in the FCPA enforcement arena. As a former prosecutor, my eyes would sometimes glaze over when discussing civil enforcement actions. The SEC, however, has turned its FCPA enforcement program into a productive and important component of its overall mission. BNY Mellon agreed to pay $14.8 million for the hiring of three interns in order to curry favor with...
Talk is cheap, especially when it comes to ethics and compliance programs. Words are easy but action and commitment are even harder. The compliance industry needs to put more meat on the bones of compliance. It is not enough to rely on subjective standards for determining whether an ethics and compliance program is effective. Compliance professionals need to design meaningful measurements and standards for ethics...
