In a refreshing change of pace, Brian and Tim spend time on one of their favorite non-Russia topics, China. First, they discuss President Biden’s pledge to defend Taiwan from a PRC invasion and what it means (if anything). Next, they discuss the state of China’s imports to Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and the growing debate over various proposals in the U.S. to create a “reverse CFIUS” process to review outbound investment to China and other countries of concern. Finally, Brian and Tim cover two new U.S. government advisories focused on North Korean IT workers and Sudan, respectively.
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EMBARGOED! is not intended and cannot be relied on as legal advice; the content only reflects the thoughts and opinions of its hosts.
***Stay sanctions free.***
Day: June 1, 2022
Is there a little voice in your heart telling you it’s time to take a different path, but your head doesn’t want to follow?
Are you afraid to show who you are because you think you have to be tough or show up a certain way?
Do you think you are the only one putting one foot in front of the other but feel like you are tripping over your own feet?
Well, my friend, you are not alone.
I was blessed to spend time with my friend Ashanti Branch, Founder and Director of Ever Forward, on #jammingwithjason. When you listen to this episode, you will see this man’s big heart, and he is one of my heroes who is doing some amazing things to change the world positively.
This is an authentic discussion where we talk about living our purpose, taking off our masks so the world can see who we are; you can’t put a price tag on changing lives for the better, emotional maturity, providing people space to be themselves, and so much more. You will relate to Ashanti’s story, and the fact that you are reading this means there is something you need to hear in this #podcast episode.
Learn more about Ashanti and the great work Ever Forward Club is doing at: https://everforwardclub.org/ and while you are there, donate so they can help more people 🙂
Create your mask at: https://millionmask.org/ and join the revolution of letting the world see who you are! You will know you are not alone.
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“If you want to understand the story behind the story of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, you can draw a straight line back to the Yukos Affair.” The demise of Yukos, Russia’s second-biggest oil company, marked the first time that Vladimir Putin tested the West, watching to see how the West would respond to the seizing of the company’s assets, Bruce Misamore says. Putin’s Oil Heist is an insider’s account of the Yukos Affair. In this pilot episode, host Loren Steffy explores how it unfolded, with first-person accounts from Misamore, the company’s former Chief Financial Treasurer.
Listen to the Episode now:
Learn About:
- Bruce Misamore’s expectations when he went to Russia in the early 2000’s. When Vladimir Putin rose to power, he was seen as someone who wanted to reform the Russian government and strengthen ties with the West. Bruce thought he’d be helping to modernize and establish new standards for Russian business to operate in the global market.
- Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rise to riches. Prior to being Misamore’s boss at Yukos, Khodorkovsky was a communist youth leader who started a business selling imported computers with some friends. With the money they made from the PC business, they started a bank, Menatep, and helped keep the Russian government afloat by buying assets from struggling state-owned businesses. Among the companies Menatep controlled was Yukos.
- How Misamore came to work for Yukos. By the year 2000, Khodorkovsky had positioned himself as the leading practitioner of normalized democratic capitalism in Russia and insisted on making Yukos more transparent by bringing in foreign directors to establish internationally recognized standards for the company’s operations. Despite Khodorkovsky’s reputation of questionable business dealings, Misamore felt that he was sincere in his passion for Yukos.
- Yukos’ role as a model for Russian businesses in the global marketplace. It became the first Russian company to publish quarterly financial statements that adhered to the U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. Yukos became Russia’s largest oil and gas company and the only large Russian company with no state ownership. They were the fastest growing oil company in the world by rate of both percentage and actual production, and the best performing international equity, both in emerging markets as well as the oil and gas markets.
Resources
Loren Steffy on LinkedIn
Stoney Creek Publishing
In this episode of Career Can Do, Mary Ann Faremouth chats with Freya Krishnan, who is Leadership Development Manager at Women of the World Network. Freya is a visibility and confidence coach, speaker, and best-selling international author with a background in software development and a broad understanding of computer environments. As the founder of Chasing Happy Mondays, she is passionate about living a balanced life, empowering women, and advocating for small businesses. Freya talks about her personal and professional journey and shares insights about how she helps women entrepreneurs.
As a business coach, Freya focuses on giving women the confidence and the tools to become more visible in their business. Both success and failure build confidence, she claims – not the failure itself, but how we overcome it and develop the skills to help us be better in future attempts. “It’s about progress and not perfection,” she says. She talks about her experience as President of the Society of Women Engineers, and how she coaches women to overcome their fears.
There are so many entrepreneurs who have the most amazing ideas, the best services, and the greatest products, but there’s something stopping them, Freya says. They either don’t have the confidence or don’t know the right strategies to get themselves seen. Freya helps them identify which visibility channels work best for them.
Resources
Freya Krishnan on the web | LinkedIn | Facebook
Faremouth.com
Welcome to The Hill Country Podcast. The Texas Hill Country is one of the most beautiful places on earth. In this podcast, Hill Country resident Tom Fox visits with the people and organizations that make this the most unique areas of Texas. Join Tom as he explores the people, places and their activities of the Texas Hill Country. In this episode, I visit Louis Amestoy, EIC of the The Lead, an online local news show in Kerrville. We discuss the recent Kerrville city and country elections.
Resources
The Lead
Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, co-hosted by Lisa Fine and Mary Shirley.
It’s the 150th episode of the Great Women in Compliance podcast. This is a special episode because Mary and Lisa decided to do a joint episode in the middle of a season. And in honor of the 150th episode, they have brought back the GWICies. This year, they call out some things that resonated with them – the best new podcast, the best innovation this year, the best swag at a conference, the program that can be a phoenix and rise up, while still providing lessons to learn, and the best “outside compliance,” success story, among others.
The other part of the episode is a recap of the recent Compliance Week conference. Lisa and Mary give their feedback about some highlights and some lessons learned in the panels. They both felt very fortunate to be a part of this live conference, and the opportunity to connect in person.
Lastly, Lisa and Mary want to thank the Compliance Podcast Network and Corporate Compliance Insights for their ongoing support and sponsorship – they couldn’t do it without them. They are also grateful for the entire #GWIC community – who have made this such a wonderful experience for them.
The Great Women in Compliance Podcast is on the Compliance Podcast Network with a selection of other Compliance related offerings to listen in to. If you are enjoying this episode, please rate it on your preferred podcast player to help other likeminded Ethics and Compliance professionals find it. You can also find the GWIC podcast on Corporate Compliance Insights where Lisa and Mary have a landing page with additional information about them and the story of the podcast. Corporate Compliance Insights is a much appreciated sponsor and supporter of GWIC, including affiliate organization CCI Press publishing the related book; “Sending the Elevator Back Down, What We’ve Learned from Great Women in Compliance” (CCI Press, 2020).
You can subscribe to the Great Women in Compliance podcast on any podcast player by searching for it and we welcome new subscribers to our podcast.
Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.
Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast that takes a deep dive into a compliance-related topic, literally going into the weeds to more fully explore a subject. In perhaps our most somber podcast ever, Matt and Tom take a deep dive into some of the failures which led to the tragedy in Uvalde, TX, and lessons for the compliance professional. Highlights include:
- Why have controls?
- How can a control over-ride impact safety?
- How can you prepare for emergencies?
- Thought-out lines of communication were created before the emergency.
- When leadership is tested.
- What is the difference between ethical values and ethical priorities?
Resources
Matt in Radical Compliance
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
- SCt blocks the state of Texas’s attempt to dismember social media. (NYT)
- Klarna’s CEO posts a list of fired employees on LinkedIn? (Bloomberg)
- Deutsche Bank DWS unit raided by German Police. (CNBC)
- Head of Deutsche Bank DWS unit resigns in the wake of the raid. (WSJ)
Last week, the Attorney General and a host of other Department of Justice (DOJ) officials announced the settlement of a massive Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and market manipulation case against Glencore plc (Glencore). Over the next several blog posts, I will be reviewing the matter and mining it for lessons learned for the compliance community. Today, in Part II, we consider the bribes paid by Glencore in violation of the FCPA.
The case involved massive bribery and corruption perpetrated by Glencore in multiple countries by multiple subsidiaries, involving multiple executives at the highest levels of the company. The resolution with the DOJ imposed $429 million in criminal penalties and forfeiture of $272 million. According to the FCPA Blog (who as usual broke the story for the compliance community), “as part of the U.S. resolution, a subsidiary of Glencore also agreed to plead guilty and pay $485.6 million to resolve market manipulation investigations by the DOJ and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. After crediting about $166 million of that payment to amounts to be paid in the UK and possibly other countries, penalties assessed in the United States will be just over $1 billion.”
According to the Information, Glencore engaged in a conspiracy for over a decade to pay more than $100 million to third-party intermediaries, while intending that a significant portion of these payments would be used to pay bribes to officials in several countries including Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
According to the DOJ Press Release, “Between approximately 2007 and 2018, Glencore and its subsidiaries caused approximately $79.6 million in payments to be made to intermediary companies in order to secure improper advantages to obtain and retain business with state-owned and state-controlled entities in West Africa, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Equatorial Guinea. Glencore concealed the bribe payments by entering into sham consulting agreements, paying inflated invoices, and using intermediary companies to make corrupt payments to foreign officials.”
Nigeria
In Nigeria, Glencore and its UK subsidiaries entered into multiple agreements to purchase crude oil and refined petroleum products from Nigeria’s state-owned and state-controlled oil company. Glencore and its subsidiaries engaged two intermediaries to pursue business opportunities and other improper business advantages, including the award of crude oil contracts, while knowing that the intermediaries would make bribe payments to Nigerian government officials to obtain such business. In Nigeria alone, Glencore and its subsidiaries paid more than $52 million to the intermediaries, intending that those funds be used, at least in part, to pay bribes to Nigerian officials.
What is most striking about reading the Information is how mundane the actions of Glencore were in this massive bribery and corruption scheme. The scheme itself went on for over 10 years and was directly supported by executives at the highest levels of the company. The schemes involved the creation of sham third parties which used sham contracts to make sham payments that were designed to be paid as bribes to corrupt Nigerian officials. Although not clear from the Information, it appears that one entity, identified as ‘West African Intermediary Company’, was engaged to identify corruption Nigerian officials to bribe. They were called ‘business opportunities.’
Illegal payments were made to access oilfields and to purchase crude oil itself. Often the latter was done by undervaluing the pricing for a cargo of crude oil or outright bribery to get the crude oil itself. Bribe payments were called “newspapers or journals or pages”. Another scheme was called the ‘Swap Agreement’ where money was funneled to the West African Intermediary Company who would then resell the crude oil to Glencore UK subsidiaries for distribution throughout the UK and beyond. Payments were made though US banks (thereby creating US and FCPA jurisdiction) disguised as campaign contributions and hidden in Switzerland and Cyprus banks.
Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Equatorial Guinea
In Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Equatorial Guinea, Glencore paid over $27 million in bribes over a multi-year period. The same basic bribery schemes, sham third parties, contracts and payments, were used involving the West African Intermediary Company to pay bribes to corrupt government officials. However, there was an interesting wrinkle for bribes paid in these countries which was the maintenance of a “Cash Desk” in both London and Baar, Switzerland. From these offices cash payments were made to officials in these countries.
Democratic Republic of Congo
In the DRC, Glencore admitted that it conspired to corruptly offer and pay approximately $27.5 million to third parties, while intending for a portion of the payments to be used as bribes to DRC officials to secure improper business advantages. The improper business advantages were around audits required of Glencore’s mining operations in the country. When Glencore received an audit notice from the DRC government, the company would simply pay a bribe to have the audit notice quashed and no audit would occur. Additionally, Glencore paid a straight $500,000 to have a corrupt judge wrongfully dismiss a lawsuit against the company. The bribe was paid through a corrupt lawyer, who falsely billed the company for $500,000 worth of never-delivered legal services and then used the monies to pay the bribe.
Brazil and Venezuela
Glencore also admitted to bribery of officials in Brazil and Venezuela. In Brazil, the bribes were paid in the heyday of Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras) before Operation Car Wash blew the lid off the corrupt culture of Brazil’s national energy concern. The primary scheme in Brazil was to overpay for crude oil from Petrobras in terms of a “price that included a built-in delta” which represented the bribe amount. Here a corruption agent was used to facilitate this bribe and all communications were through personal email accounts that somehow eluded oversight or employer monitoring. Once again payments were made through US banks adding to the US jurisdiction. In Venezuela, the scheme was a bit different as the goal was not the obtaining of crude but late payments due Glencore from Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) and demurrage fees as well. Bribes were paid to PdVSA officials to secure out of line payments.
Tomorrow we will consider the Commodity Price Manipulation Case.
