As Tom recovers from the Astros loss to the Washington Nationals, two huge stories break, Unaoil guilty pleas and Jho Low agrees to forfeiture. He and Jay review them and reflect on some other of this week’s top compliance and ethics stories which caught their collective eyes.
1. The Hoskins trial begins. Dylan Tokar reports. Law360 has two reports.
2. Jho Low agrees to forfeit all goods claimed by in US in its civil forfeiture actions. Byron Tau and Aruna Viswanathan report.
3. Is the DFS about to bring the hammer down on cyber breaches? Davis Polk lawyers in NYU’s Compliance and Enforcement blog.
4. What are the stakes for corporate wrongdoers? Dan Portnoy.
5. Unaoil CEO and COO, plus head of BD all plead guilty as pleas unsealed. Dick Cassin breaks the story.
6. Mattel announces material controls weakness. Jaclyn Jaeger reports.
7. Should a merger partner be an ethical fit? Jay explores in his continuing series.
8. What will the Crown Prosecution Service review of the SFO mean going forward? Sam Tate and Charlotte Thompson explain.
9. Quid Pro Quo-a Primer. Rick Messick.
10. What are 5 steps you can engage in to improve BOD monitoring of compliance. Mike Volkov explains.
11. Tom had a great group of top-notch podcasts, this week on the CPN. Check out the following lineup: FCPA Compliance Report– Steven Lofchie on the Cadwalader Cabinet; Innovation in Compliance-Thinkeen Law, a law firm that focuses on data and compliance; #GWIC with Part 1 of a 2-part podcast with Michelle Shapiro; 12 O’Clock High– Branding lessons from Count Dracula; Popcorn and Compliance-Jay and Tom consider the compliance angles from Star Trek II-The Wrath of Khan, Sunday Book Review-four books from the UNC Press. The podcasts are available on multiple sites: the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, JDSupra, Megaphone, YouTube, Spotify and the Compliance Podcast Network.
12. Check in next week where Ronnie Feldman and I have a 5-part podcast series on Creativity and Compliance celebrating Compliance Week 2019.
Tom Fox is the Compliance Evangelist and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com.
For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit our sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.
Day: November 1, 2019
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
- Is going public even necessary any longer? (FT)
- Is soccer the most corruption sport? (Reuters)
- Did Russia bribe its way to hosting the World Cup? (Moscow Times)
- EU to mandate stronger AML laws. (FT)
Categories
Training Frequency
In this episode of Excellence in Training, Shawn Rogers provides some thoughts on how training frequency and the amount of training can positively or negatively impact an overall training strategy.
It be fantastic if we viewed compliance training in the same way instead of giving an hour-long course on a topic they have heard before, what if instead employees received a 10-minute “refresher” training just to maintain their awareness and get the message that they should constantly be vigilant?
There are some compliance topics that are so important to a company that training needs to be required fairly regularly, maybe even annually. For instance, at GM, we have decided that it is important to provide reminder training annually on a few topics:
- The importance of our Code of Conduct
- The importance of speaking up when a concern is observed, and how to report the concern
- An understanding of the company’s non-retaliation policy
- The importance of workplace and vehicle safety
- The requirement to disclose conflicts of interest.
At GM, we are moving towards a less frequent repetition of lengthy training courses for our current employees, and more frequent “refresher” or “reminder” training modules that keep the risk top-of-mind without assuming that lengthy courses need to be repeated every year. It is a very common sense and defensible approach to compliance training.
New GM employees are required to take more detailed courses during their first year so that they are exposed to the key risks in detail. After that, full-length courses are staggered in a three-year interval so we can keep the courses updated and to avoid over-training.
Disclaimer-As a company, GM uses many training vendors. GM’s compliance function primarily uses two vendors. Rogers has worked with other good vendors that currently do not work with GM. Rogers is not promoting any specific vendors, nor is he disparaging any specific vendors in this podcast. And, of course, these opinions are Roger’s alone and opinions that developed over almost 15 years. He is not speaking on behalf of GM in any way.
We have been getting accountability all wrong in the compliance profession. It’s not a set of tasks – it’s a way of thinking and it has to come from the heart as well as the head. On Accountability: The Heart of Compliance Tom Fox and Sam Silverstein dig into what accountability means to the corporate compliance function and business organizations and most significantly, how to make it an integral part of your culture. In this episode we consider a recent example of the lack of accountability in the corporate world, Wells Fargo and the complete disconnect between what the (former) CEO was saying and the reality on the ground for employee. Some of the highlights include:
- Why are there disconnects from what senior leadership says or believes and life in the trenches for employees?
- How does an organization turn things around?
- Is bringing in a new CEO enough or must an organization do more?
- Why is transparency is still the best disinfectant?
For more information on Sam Silverstein and his work on accountability, click here.
