Tagged: Justice Department

British American Tobacco Pays $629 Million to Settle Violations of North Korea Sanctions (Part I of II)

The Justice Department warned  companies that sanctions enforcement is the “new FCPA.” DOJ just delivered its first salvo to back up its message. As part of a broad effort to prosecute funding of North Korea’s nuclear program, DOJ and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) announced a joint settlement with British American Tobacco and its Asian marketing subsidiary (“BAT”), under which BAT agreed to pay...

Justice Department, HHS-OIG and Defense Investigators Bring Flurry of False Claims Act Cases (Part I of V)

The False Claims Act is a powerful enforcement tool.  The Justice Department with its partner agencies are ramping up enforcement efforts.  The Biden DOJ is preparing to implement an aggressive FCA program across healthcare, defense industries and other government contractors.  Combined with this initiative, DOJ recently implemented an antitrust enforcement task force relating to government procurement.  In this environment, companies have to address these risks...

DOJ Indicts Two Former Diplomats from Chad for Taking a $2 Million Bribe

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...

Wells Fargo Settles With Justice Department for $3 Billion

This year, 2020, has been an enforcement year opening with billion-dollar settlements: first, Airbus settled FCPA charges for $4 billion, and now Wells Fargo for $3 billion.  What a start to an enforcement year! We all have heard about the Wells Fargo debacle, and I have written repeatedly about Wells Fargo’s blatant misconduct.  Wells Fargo has defined itself as a company lead by rotten senior...

A Closer Look at ISO37001 – Something Old or Something New? (Part I of V)

The release of ISO 37001 has triggered an important discussion among legal and compliance professionals. In a five-part series, I plan to address the value of ISO 37001, provide a substantive analysis, and to evaluate the contribution ISO 37001 has made (or will make) in the compliance field. First, I recommend that everyone spend time studying ISO 37001. It is a mistake to write off...

Where O’ Where Did Our Monitors Go? — The Telia Bribery Case

Just when everyone was anticipating the beginning of an uptick in FCPA enforcement in 2017, the Justice Department and the SEC delivered a resounding message to remind everyone that FCPA enforcement is here to stay. However, the Telia decision may be the first indication of some changes in DOJ’s FCPA enforcement policies. It is hard to say from just one major DOJ enforcement action but...

Webinar: How to Conduct FCPA Audits

How to Conduct FCPA Audits   May 4, 2016, 12 Noon EST Sign Up Here  As companies implement anti-corruption compliance programs, the need for auditing and monitoring of their compliance programs increases. Companies have to structure an audit program to address significant risks and to identify potential weaknesses and problems. Mitigating those deficiencies can be a real challenge. Join Michael Volkov, CEO of The Volkov...

Parent Company and Subsidiary Liability for FCPA Violations: Fighting the Disinformation Campaign

Akin to politics (to a smaller degree), there is a fair amount of disinformation, some call it bloviating, put out by the FCPA Paparazzi. Some of this disinformation is motivated by immature attempts to “market” legal services; other sources of disinformation carry a readily apparent bias, one way or the other, and usually are supported by self-citations to one’s own “scholarship” to prove their points....

The Demise of Valeant Pharmaceuticals: A Case Study in Rotten Culture and Business Ethics

Showing my age again, Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run included a hilarious scene when Woody’s parents wearing Groucho Marx glasses talk about their criminal son (Woody/Virgil Starkwell), his dad exclaimed “He’s rotten, he is a gangster.”  See clip here. Well, the story of Valeant Pharmaceuticals is a familiar one of corporate greed and misconduct, based on a “rotten” tone at the top and...

Anti-Kickback Enforcement – Steady and Aggressive

When commentators criticize the FCPA for its broad coverage of international business operations, these same commentators would have real trouble with the US Anti-Kickback statute. Talk about broad coverage and then complicate it with specific exemptions that are challenging to interpret and apply. When it comes to fraud enforcement in the healthcare industry, the Justice Department wields a mighty stick – the False Claims Act....