Tagged: remediation

Corporate Culture: Monitor, Intervene and Remediate (Part III of III)

Once defined, installed, and surrounded with a consequence management system, a corporate culture is not fixed in stone.  To the contrary, as the business adapts through growth, innovation or in response to outside market and social forces, a company’s culture operates dynamically to reflect all of these influences.  Change is inevitable for businesses (and for individuals in life).  With this perspective, companies cannot just sit...

DOJ Rolls Out Voluntary Disclosure Program for US Attorneys’ Offices

The Justice Department is on a marketing campaign – pushing a simple message.  If your company commits misconduct, come in and confess to the Justice Department.  To push this message, DOJ has tinkered with its Corporate Enforcement Policy, and bent over backwards to encourage, cajole and persuade companies to come in and confess to misconduct. The Justice Department consists of various components and, unless you...

DOJ and SEC Secure $41 Million Settlement from Brazilian Airline for FCPA Violations (Part I of II)

The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission reached a $41 million settlement with GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes S.A. (“GOL”) to resolve criminal and civil foreign bribery charges. GOL entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement (“DPA”) with DOJ in exchange for payment of a $17 million criminal penalty.  DOJ credited $1.7 million of that penalty against a $3.4 million fine that GOL...

Remediating the Organization’s Culture (Part IV of IV)

“The truest measure of an effective compliance program is how it responds to misconduct.”— FCPA Guidance (2d. ed 2020) This straight-forward statement (above) of a company’s commitment to its “effective” compliance program is powerful.  In a nutshell, it says it all. Over the years as a federal prosecutor, and later as outside counsel, I have witnessed a variety of responses to misconduct.  On the one...

DOJ and Boeing Settle 737 Max Fraud and Safety Charges for $2.5 Billion (Part I of III)

Boeing’s long and tragic scandal surrounding its 737 MAX safety concerns and FAA disclosure violations has come to an end.  DOJ announced a settlement early this year, on January 7, 2021, which included a three-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in exchange for total payments of $2.5 billion, consisting of: a $243.6 million criminal penalty, $1.77 billion in compensation to its airline customers, and $500 million...

Four Current FCPA Enforcement Trends

There are two distinct themes in FCPA enforcement – the first is consistency, i.e., that some enforcement actions are relatively consistent across the board and, in the last five to ten years, the FCPA caseload has been fairly steady; the second is variability, meaning that new policies have an impact on FCPA enforcement.  Some minor and some major.  All of this may be another in...

Five Key Takeaways from DOJ’s New FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy

In a significant FCPA enforcement development, DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General (“DAG”) Rod Rosenstein announced the implementation of a new FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy last week. (Here).  The announcement was not a surprise based on earlier statements made by DAG Rosenstein. Before outlining the specific five takeaways, there are a few issues surrounding the release of the new policy that require some comment. DAG Rosenstein implemented...

Can Wells Fargo Fix its Defective Culture? (Part I of III)

The more you learn about Wells Fargo’s culture problems, the more difficult the problems become. But you have to start somewhere, and assuming that Wells Fargo really is committed to addressing the serious problems they face, this will take a long time and a lot of work. Wells Fargo is really at the early stages of a massive remediation project. The board has essentially taken...

A Strategy for Non-Disclosure of FCPA Violations

We all understand that issues are not black and white, meaning there are areas of gray when analysis and cost-benefits need to be weighed. Lawyers are regularly identifying legal risks and applying such risks to specific courses of action. Depending on the countervailing considerations, lawyers can recommend moving forward in the face of a specific risk. Much has been written (including on this blog) about...

FCPA Remediation Focus on Supervisory Personnel

The Justice Department’s FCPA enforcement and remediation focus on supervisory personnel is an interesting development. On the one hand, DOJ has been slow to bring individual criminal enforcement actions for FCPA violations. At the same time, they are flirting with a potential new enforcement approach – a criminal prosecution for circumventing internal controls without proof of bribery. However, FCPA prosecutors appear to be gun-shy after...