Compliance officers understand that a company’s greatest risks surround access to and use of money. A CCO has to understand a company’s financial controls, and in a perfect world, should have a seat at the table in the crafting and enforcement of such controls. A company faces serious harms, enforcement risks and collateral consequences from deficiencies in its financial controls. Sarbanes-Oxley requires public companies to...
A Chief Compliance Officer has a number of important relationships to attend to in the corporate governance landscape. A critical relationship needed to “operationalize” a compliance program is a partnership between a CCO and the Chief Financial Officer and its key constituents, including the Internal Auditor and Comptroller. Unfortunately, a recent survey (Here) revealed that only 37 percent of CFOs actively participate in their company’s...
The Embraer FCPA settlement action contains a number of important lessons learned and compliance reminders. In several significant respects, the Embraer case confirms in several areas why proactive compliance programs are important to prevent and detect possible bribery schemes. Given the length of the Embraer investigation, we can only hope that many compliance programs have moved beyond the deficiencies highlighted in the case. Nonetheless, there...
The SEC is setting its sights on individual prosecutions. Both the Justice Department and the SEC have reiterated the importance of prosecuting individuals. DOJ’s Yates Memorandum promises to deliver an increase in civil and criminal prosecutions. The SEC is delivering on its stated goal of increasing individual prosecutions. In a busy FCPA enforcement week, the SEC settled the SciClone Pharmaceuticals case and a separate prosecution...
