Day: October 14, 2019

Categories
Why a Duck

Horsefeathers and the Juniper Networks FCPA Enforcement Action

From Vaudeville to the Silver Screen to the Small Screen, the Marx Brothers made an impact wherever people found them. Now Tom Fox and Mike Volkov have wedded their love of the Marx Brothers with their passion for compliance and bring them into the boardroom to help explain and explore the sometimes-chaotic world of governance, risk-management, ethics and compliance. In this episode they discuss the movie Horsefeathers and how it informs the recent Juniper Networks FCPA enforcement action.  Highlights from the podcast include:
  1. Why was this enforcement action so significant (or not)?
  2. Why does third-party management continue to bedevil so many companies?
  3. Why AP is a key gatekeeper for a best practices compliance program?
  4. What are some of the key lessons learned for the compliance professional?
  5. How does data analytics from this enforcement action inform compliance programs going forward?
  6. Why is GTE such a low hanging fruit for compliance programs?
  7. Why are slush funds so problematic under the FCPA?
Resources
  1. From Tom Fox-see article Juniper Networks FCPA Enforcement Action: Speak Sternly and Enhance Controls, click here.
  2. From Mike Volkov-See article Juniper Networks Settles FCPA Violations with SEC or $11.7 Million, click here.
  3. Download a copy of the SEC Cease and Desist Order, here.
Marx Brothers
Horsefeathers-the full movie on YouTube.
Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

Why Culture Matters-Episode 1, What is Ethical Culture and Why Does it Matter

Welcome to this special five-part podcast series with Jay Rosen, VP of Business Development for Affiliated Monitors, Inc. (AMI), who is the sponsor of this podcast series. Corporate culture exists in the space between what an organization professes and what it does. It is important to pay attention to corporate culture as disconnects in this reality can be quite costly. Witness the continuing imbroglio surrounding Wells Fargo. In this series Jay and I will be exploring key aspects of corporate culture, including why it matters, what influences culture, the CCOs role in culture, assessing corporate culture and how to use that information to improve culture. In this Part I, we consider what is ethical culture and why does it matter.
 Highlights include:
  • An exploration of the question “what is corporate culture”?
  • Corporate culture is the way things really arein an organization and the way things really work.
  • There may be more than one culture in an organization and there might well be multiple subcultures in a company.
  • M&A due diligence around culture is critical.
  • What different kinds of cultural systems could impact a company?
  • Why is having a “speak up” culture a key indication of a strong ethical culture?
  • How can an organization hold its employees throughout the organization accountable?
  • Why must there must be an alignment between what top management says and the company’s core values to have an effective culture?
Please join us for Episode 2, where we will explore the factors that influence a company’s ethical culture.
For more information see Jay’s blog post What is Ethical Culture and Why Does it Matter? on Corporate Compliance Insights.
For more information on Affiliated Monitors, Inc. check out their website here.
Categories
Daily Compliance News

October 14, 2019- the dodgy deal edition

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
  • Barclays bankers say deal with Qatar was ‘dodgy’. (BBC)
  • What did the Angels know and when did they know it? (WSJ)
  • Your mouth will get you every time. (Washington Post)
  • Will the ‘resource curse’ hit Mozambique? (FT)
Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

Parth Chanda on integrating data analytics into a compliance platform

In this episode I visit with Parth Chanda, CEO of Lextegrity, a leading technology platform that combines the up-front due diligence approval of planned third-party spend with the analysis of actual spend — focused on fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest. Some of the highlights include:

  • Professional background for Chanda, with nearly 20 years in compliance.
  • Some of the problems the Lextegrity Integrity platform is addressing with for compliance professionals?
  • What traditional challenges do CCO’s face when they try to deploy compliance monitoring solutions? They include:
  1. Employees lacking sufficient tools to assess risk and take ownership of their own compliance.
  2. Complex reports or analytics for the business users not user-friendly or intuitive.
  3. Too few legal, compliance, IT and anti-fraud resources to support the business or continuous monitoring efforts.
  4. Disorganized and disparate data stores.
  5. Risks managed in multiple systems that don’t “talk to each other” or require duplicate entry or manual data input processes.
  6. Not having real-time analytics, reporting or monitoring, which leads to missed anomalies and patterns.
  • In September’s FRAUD Magazine innovation column authored by Vincent Walden he quoted you for the following, “Avoiding professional biases in your fraud risk management program”. How does the Lextegrity platform help avoid bias and integrating typical compliance functions with traditional internal audit functions?
  • How does the Lextegrity platform integrate both pre-approvals and monitoring? What are the benefits to that as compared to what’s in the market?
  • What’s the benefits to General Counsels and heads of investigations from the platform and about how the machine learning aspects help companies be more strategic and effective?
  • What advice do you have for CCOs and General Counsels when they are evaluating the use of data analytics into their compliance program?
  • Where can listeners go for more information? 

Resources
Parth Chanda
Lextegrity website
Article “Avoiding Bias in Your Fraud Management Program” by Vince Walden in September/October issue of Fraud Magazine