In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
CONVERGE is in its 5th year of bringing together the world’s leading companies for 2 days of dynamic speakers, thought-provoking breakout sessions, and opportunities to connect with like-minded professionals. This year the conference has gone virtual. You will leave the conference with new resources and best practices allowing you to continue the hard work of driving ethics to the center of your business. In today’s episode I visit with Sam Silverstein. We visit about his breakout at Converge20 on The Accountability Workshop.
What is Accountability and why have your been getting it wrong. More importantly with the renewed DOJ emphasis on Culture, Culture Assessment, Continuous Monitoring and Continuous Improvement, how can you use Accountability to drive the desired behaviors and satisfy the DOJ. For more registration and information on Converge20, click here.
Next, consider what COSO says about assessing compliance internal controls. In its Illustrative Guide, COSO laid out its views on “how to assess the effectiveness of its internal controls.” It went on to note, “An effective system of internal controls provides reasonable assurance of achievement of the entity’s objectives, relating to operations, reporting and compliance.” Moreover, there are two over-arching requirements that can only be met through such a structured post. First, each of the five components are present and functioning. Second, are the five components “operating together in an integrated approach.” One of the most critical components of the COSO 2013 Internal Controls Framework is that it sets internal control standards against those which you can audit to assess the strength of your compliance internal controls.
Under a compliance regime, you may be faced with known or relevant criteria to classify any deficiency. For example, if written policies do not have at a minimum the categories of policies laid out in the 2020 FCPA Resource Guide, which states “the nature and extent of transactions with foreign governments, including payments to foreign officials; use of third parties; gifts, travel, and entertainment expenses; charitable and political donations; and facilitating and expediting payments”, also formulated in the Illustrative Guide, such a finding would preclude management from “concluding that the entity has met the requirements for effective internal controls in accordance with the Framework.”
Three key takeaways:
Welcome to a special five-part podcast series where I take a deep dive into the Miller & Chevalier Chartered 2020 Latin American Corruption Survey. Over this five-part series I will visit with firm lawyers James Tillen, Matt Ellis, Alexandra Almonte and Greg Bates. Miller & Chevalier and 14 partner firms have tracked perspectives on anti-corruption issues in the region since 2008. It is the most comprehensive survey on the perception of corruption in Latin America.
This year, 54 percent of survey respondents said corruption is a significant obstacle to doing business – up 10 percent since 2012 – while only 45 percent of respondents believe offenders are likely to be prosecuted, down from 66 percent in 2008. Despite Latin America’s anti-corruption progress over the last decade this new survey data reveals corruption risk to be at an all-time high across the region.
In this Episode 1, I visit with firm Member James Tillen on the Survey’s findings on region-wide corruption risks and region-wide perceptions of corruption and effectiveness of local anti-corruption laws. Some of the highlights include:
Join us in our next episode where we explore Survey findings on some country-specific corruption issues with Matt Ellis.
For more information on the Miller & Chevalier Chartered 2020 Latin American Corruption Survey, click here. The Survey is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
CONVERGE is in its 5th year of bringing together the world’s leading companies for 2 days of dynamic speakers, thought-provoking breakout sessions, and opportunities to connect with like-minded professionals. This year the conference has gone virtual. You will leave the conference with new resources and best practices allowing you to continue the hard work of driving ethics to the center of your business. In today’s episode I visit with Lisa Beth Lentini Walker. We visit about her panel at Converge20 on Bypassing burnout: Maximize your ethical impact, grow your career, and empower your team.
Lisa Beth is the CEO & Founder, Lumen Worldwide Endeavors. In 2020, compliance teams are a significant value driver for their companies—but our impact doesn’t have to stop at the borders of our office; better, more ethical business practices benefit our communities and society at large. But that’s a heavy burden to carry and Lisa Beth has strategies for you. For more registration and information on Converge20, click here.
As the ICIJ releases some 2100 SARs from FinCen detailing over $2 trillion in illegal banking activity, the fires in California, Oregon and Washington finally abate. Tom and Jay are back to look at top compliance articles and stories which caught their eye this week.
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.
