In this episode I visit with Eric Feldman on how a company can begin to assess its own culture. We began by considering whether a company should try and perform a self-assessment of its own culture or whether it should bring in a truly independent professional to do the assessment. Feldman said that both are valid but each has a different focus. The self-assessment is really more akin to ongoing monitoring. In this scenario, a company has the responsibility to monitor its own workforce and culture literally on a day-to-day basis. He stated, “That ongoing monitoring and oversight is critical to being able to manage what is a very normal ebb and flow of the culture in an organization. Cultures are dependent on people and people come and go in companies and that can influence the culture. The market and financial stress can influence the culture and what happens within a company.” These are all things a company should track and monitor.
The bottom line is that it is helpful to take the temperature of your employees internally by doing regular monitoring of your company to understand its culture and what needs to be done. However, employees are not going to be as honest and forthcoming with someone in their company as they would be with an independent third-party. This is because employees are almost always afraid of the potential blow back from superiors. Employees will be much more reserved with people that they know or people in their own company so it can be much more powerful and much more effective for an independent third party performing cultural assessment work.
Day: June 29, 2020
Must an investigator warn an employee that concealing information from company lawyers conducting an internal FCPA investigation could be a federal crime? Even if the company attorneys provided the now standard corporate attorney Upjohn warning? Does a company attorney asking questions morph into a de facto federal agent during an internal company investigation regarding alleged FCPA violations and is the attorney thereby required to provide a Miranda warning to employees during said investigation?
Employees who are subject to being interviewed or otherwise required to cooperate in an internal investigation may find themselves on the sharp horns of a dilemma requiring either (1) cooperating with the internal investigation or (2) losing their jobs for failure to cooperate by providing documents, testimony or other evidence. Many U.S. businesses mandate full employee cooperation with internal investigations or those handled by outside counsel on behalf of a corporation. These requirements can exert a coercive force, “often inducing employees to act contrary to their personal legal interests in favor of candidly disclosing wrongdoing to corporate counsel.” Moreover, such a corporate policy may permit a company to claim to the government a spirit of cooperation in the hopes of avoiding prosecution in addition to increasing the chances of earning meaningful credit under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines or the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy.
Three key takeaways:
- Make sure you provide an Upjohn warning.
- If an employee demands counsel to represent them during an internal investigation, who bears the cost?
- Always check state law requirements around internal investigations.
Welcome to this special podcast series; In Conversation with K2 Intelligence FIN: Navigating an Increasingly Complex Sanctions Landscape. This series is sponsored by K2 Intelligence FIN. This week I will visit with Adam Frey, Managing Director at Intelligence FIN and Eric Lorber, Vice President at Intelligence FIN.
Frey is a key member of the firm’s independent consultant team, at the direction of federal, state, and/or international regulators, he works to monitor and assess global financial institutions’ compliance with AML and OFAC enforcement actions and related consent orders. Adam helps lead K2 Intelligence FIN’s reviews of the institutions’ BSA/AML and sanctions compliance programs, policies, and procedures. Lorber advises global financial institutions on issues related to sanctions and anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism compliance. Prior to re-joining FIN, Eric was a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the United States Department of the Treasury, where he provided strategic guidance on U.S. sanctions and AML/CFT policies. Earlier in his career, he was an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he advised clients in the areas of international trade regulation, compliance, and anti-corruption. He is also the senior director of the Center of Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Over the week, we will review the current sanctions landscape, discuss how to build a sanctions compliance program, walk listeners through what happens when you discover a sanctions breach or potential breach, consider new sanctions exposure and conclude with a look in that veiled land of the future by considering issues on the horizon. In this Episode 1, I am joined by Eric Lorber to review the current sanctions landscape.
The bottom line is that sanctions are here to stay and every business needs to understand their impact to your company.
Please join us tomorrow where we discuss building a sanctions compliance program with Adam Frey.
Resources
For more information on K2 Intelligence FIN’s Sanctions Risk Advisory Services, click here.
For more information on Navigating the Sanctions Minefield: What Every Global Business Should Know, click here.
In the Episode, I am joined by Louis Perold, founder of Citadel Compliance. Perold has with more than 20 years’ experience in legal and compliance across various industries including financial, oil and gas, mining, retail and manufacturing. He has successfully transformed and operationalized global ethics and compliance risk management programs from concepts to real-world practices and infrastructures that work. He is a strategic business partner and team-focused leader experienced in delivering proactive solutions that help protect organizations from compliance failures, liabilities, and reputational damage. He is also a well-respected global educator, advocate, and influencer on ethics and compliance risk management effectiveness and best practices.
We visit about his founding of Citadel Compliance, the current state of ABC compliance in South Africa and how Covid-19 has impacted business in South Africa. Some of the highlights include:
- What does Perold hope to bring to the market through your own compliance consulting firm, Citadel Compliance?
- How does Perold assess the current state of anti-corruption compliance in South Africa?
- Have internationally focused South African companies come to embrace ABC compliance as a way of doing business?
- For companies who want to do business in South Africa, what are some of the key issues from the compliance perspective?
- What are some of the ways coronavirus has impacted compliance in South Africa?
Resources
For more information on Perold, check out the Citadel Consulting website here.
