In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
The first week of the New Year brings James Bond into the world of corporate governance and compliance. Jay wonders if the Patriots run is at an end. The lads then turn to consider some of this abbreviated week’s top compliance and ethics stories which caught their collective eyes.
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.
Obviously, in every compliance program, the ethical tone of a company and accountability all starts at the top and most specifically senior management. The Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs – Guidance Document (2019 Guidance) stated, “The company’s top leaders – the board of directors and executives – set the tone for the rest of the company. Prosecutors should examine the extent to which senior management have clearly articulated the company’s ethical standards, conveyed and disseminated them in clear and unambiguous terms, and demonstrated rigorous adherence by example. Prosecutors should also examine how middle management, in turn, have reinforced those standards and encouraged employees to abide by them.” To assist companies in understanding this requirement the 2019 Guidance sets out the following inquiries.
Conduct at the Top – How have senior leaders, through their words and actions, encouraged or discouraged compliance, including the type of misconduct involved in the investigation? What concrete actions have they taken to demonstrate leadership in the company’s compliance and remediation efforts? How have they modelled proper behavior to subordinates? Have managers tolerated greater compliance risks in pursuit of new business or greater revenues? Have managers encouraged employees to act unethically to achieve a business objective, or impeded compliance personnel from effectively implementing their duties?
This requirement is more than simply the ubiquitous “tone-at-the-top,” as it focuses on the conduct of senior management. The DOJ wants to see a company’s senior leadership actually doing compliance. The DOJ asks if company leadership has, through their words and concrete actions, brought the right message of doing business ethically and in compliance to the organization. How does senior management model its behavior on a company’s values and finally, how is such conduct monitored in an organization?
Three key takeaways:
Amanda welcomes Calvin Lane to the program to talk about the new changes in Australian Whistleblower laws and discuss how ComplianceLine can help!
Listen to the episode:
Operationalizing your compliance program can take many shapes and forms. Using the entire risk management process to embed your compliance program within the contours of your organization is an important key step that will allow you to have full visibility of your compliance risks through a longer life cycle. Forecasting allows you to consider your business strategy and wed the risks you can foresee. Risk assessments allow you to evaluate and measure known risks. Risk-based monitoring allows you to monitor both the compliance risks you know about and detect those you do not know, on an ongoing basis.
Three key takeaways:
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
2019 was a very significant year for every compliance practitioner and compliance program. Not only was it the year with the single highest amount of FCPA enforcement actions, fines and penalties assessed against corporation but it also saw the greatest number of individual prosecutions. Yet perhaps most significantly there were three noteworthy releases of information by the federal government which directly impacted compliance professionals in 2019. Two came from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and one came from the Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). These three guidances contributed to the continued evolution of what constitutes a best practices compliance program.
Three key takeaways:
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
Richard Lummis and I are back and today for our final podcast of 2019 and the second decade of the 21stCentury. Today, we provide a wrap up of 2019 podcasts, giving some of our favorites and new issues we learned about or perhaps reacquainted ourselves with from history. We then consider some of the topics we will explore in 2020.
Highlights of this podcast include:
Resources
Metropolis by Phillip Kerr
Leaders: Myths and Reality by General Stanley McCrystal, Jeff Eggers and Jason Magone
