Categories
Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 2 – Kanga, Roo and the Compliance Ombudsman

This week I am exploring a five-part series on compliance as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters who live in the Hundred Acre Woods: Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga & Roo, and Piglet. Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh was created by English author A. A. Milne. Yesterday, we introduced Tigger and the sales function’s role in compliance. In this episode, we focus on Kanga and her son, Roo, and the Corporate Ombudsman’s role in compliance.

Kanga is a female kangaroo and the doting mother of Roo. They live near the Sandy Pit in the northwestern part of the Hundred Acre Wood. Kanga is the only female character to appear in the books. Kanga is kind-hearted, calm, patient, sensible and down to earth. She likes to keep things clean and organized and offers motherly advice and food to anyone who asks her. She is protective over Roo and treats him with kind words and gentle discipline. She also has a sense of humor, as revealed in chapter seven of Winnie-the-Pooh when Rabbit connives to kidnap Roo, leaving Piglet in his place; Kanga pretends not to notice that Piglet is not Roo and proceeds to give him Roo’s usual bath, much to Piglet’s dismay.

Roo is Kanga’s cheerful, playful, energetic son, who moved to the Hundred Acre Wood with her. His best friends are Tigger and a young Heffalump named Lumpy, who loves to play with him. Roo is the youngest of the main characters. When Kanga and Roo first come to the Hundred Acre Wood, everyone thinks Kanga is a fierce animal, but discover this untrue and become friends with her. In the book, when Tigger comes to the forest, she welcomes him into her home, attempts to find him food he likes and allows him to live with her and Roo. After this, Kanga treats him like she does her son. I want to use Kanga and Roo to consider another role in compliance. It is the creation of an ombudsman for employees to help facilitate compliance.

Kanga is the most trusted soul in the Hundred Acre Woods. She would be an ideal ombudsman and an example that the “success of these programs depends partly on getting the right person for the role. A good ombudsman is a superb listener who establishes trust in people at all levels.” They need to have the skills to think through solutions to problems. Kanga certainly has such skills. A great example is the arrival of Tigger in the Hundred Acre Woods. While Tigger claims to like everything to eat for breakfast, it is quickly proven he does not like honey, acorns, thistles, or most of the contents of Kanga’s larder. However, he discovers what Tigger likes best is the extract of malt, which Kanga has on hand because she gives it to Roo as “strengthening medicine”. This is another key trait of an ombudsman; the person must also respect senior executives and be comfortable taking issues to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or the Board if necessary. Understanding the corporate culture and who has influence is also important – which is why many capable people in this role are promoted from inside the company. The same can be said for Kanga in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Join me tomorrow when I consider Eeyore and the role of corporate legal in compliance.

Categories
The Corruption Files

The Bribery Trilogy in Telecom with Tom Fox and Michael DeBernardis

Tom Fox and Michael DeBernardis go in-depth about the bribery scandals of three big names in telecom, MTS, VimpelCom, and Telia; Ericsson’s shady deals in multiple countries, how knowing high-risk countries and the beneficiaries of companies can save you from trouble, and the importance of visibility for compliance professionals.

▶️ The Bribery Trilogy in Telecom with Tom Fox and Michael DeBernardis

Key points discussed in the episode:

✔️ Tom Fox gives a brief background on the VimpelCom case. He points out how the company, including MTS and Telia, were all tied up with the schemes of Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of a former president in Uzbekistan.

✔️ The DOJ and the SEC are confident in tackling companies taking advantage of “shell companies” and getting involved with corrupt government officials. There was malicious intent on the companies’ sides regardless of the rank of the person involved.

✔️ Tom Fox describes the Telia case. Michael DeBernardis points out that the difference between the outcomes of Telia, MTS, and VimpelCom’s cases was the penalties. Cooperation from Telia and Vimpelcom garnered significant reductions.

✔️ Tom Fox lays out the MTS case. Even when violations were found in Kolorit’s purchase, MTS higher-ups presented excuses that the compliance team failed to argue. The control environment for transparency has since improved post-prosecution.

✔️ Michael DeBernardis emphasizes the risk behind unidentified beneficial owners. VimpelCom, Telia, and MTS had full knowledge of their schemes. But the story is a lot more muddied and complex to the ears of the board and compliance professionals.

✔️ Tom Fox retells the Ericsson case, illustrating it as not just a corrupt third-party, paid-for entertainment, or donations. The imagination only limits the depths where companies explore in weaving the most intricate schemes. Michael DeBernardis attributes this to enterprise-wide failure.

✔️ Knowing the high-risk countries can save your company from trouble. Once you start paying bribes, you’re stuck. The receiving party already has claws on you and will threaten to report to US authorities if you attempt to exit. Michael DeBernardis adds that despite these cases being beyond US soil, companies won’t be able to challenge them.

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Do you have a podcast (or do you want to)? Join the only network dedicated to compliance, risk management, and business ethics, the Compliance Podcast Network. For more information, contact Tom Fox at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

Categories
Innovation in Compliance

The Accelerated Transformation of Compliance with Samantha Regan

 

Accenture provides top-notch services in strategy & consulting, and operations for its clients. Samantha Regan is Managing Director and Global Lead for the Regulatory Remediation & Compliance Transformation group within Accenture’s Finance & Risk practice. Tom Fox welcomes her to this week’s show to talk about the Accenture Compliance Risk Study Report. 

 

 

Accenture’s Compliance Risk Study

Tom asks Samantha about the origin of the report. Samantha responds that each year, the team at Accenture gets together to observe and record what’s happening in the world of compliance. They seek to discover the key issues and concerns for compliance officers across various organizations. Developing a framework, conducting a survey and collating the data are the next steps. This is followed by “synthesizing those results and looking for the insights from the information that’s been provided and then developing the report off the back of that,” Samantha tells Tom. 

 

Primary Compliance Risks In 2022 

Tom asks Samantha to discuss the primary risks that they identified through the study. She replies that the biggest area of focus for compliance folk in 2022 is cybersecurity, ESG, and privacy. Tom asks her to identify some challenges compliance professionals face when responding to and managing these risks. New pressures are constantly being placed on compliance professionals, Samantha explains. “Compliance functions continue to evolve at a speed and scale and force the compliance function to change from being reactive to what was going on in the environment, to needing to be more proactive, building a function that is able to adapt.” She believes that by using data, compliance officers can “build a future-ready and risk-proof compliance function”. 

 

Looking Ahead

Tom asks Samantha how she thinks compliance professionals should respond to risks in 2025. Would the trends highlighted in the study be accelerated? “I think the warp speed at which companies are operating is going to require compliance functions to have accurate and complete visibility into risks and mitigating controls across the business,” she comments. Data from the study suggests that most of the issues compliance officials have can be attributed to the lack of data; there needs to be enough information available to assess risk exposure. She mentions that there is increasing concern surrounding third-party risk. Samantha believes that with the increasing speed and evolution of risks, “the compressed transformation of organizations and industries is just going to put increasing pressure on compliance functions to continue the transition.” 

 

Resources

Samantha Regan | LinkedIn

Accenture | Compliance Risk Study – 2022 

 

Categories
Daily Compliance News

August 2, 2022 the We Are the Champions edition

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Does corruption increase depression? (Dovetail Press)
  • ESG and Insurance. (Reuters)
  • Deshaun Watson gave 6 game suspension. (com)
  • English women bring it home. (ESPN)
Categories
Blog

Congrats to the Lionesses and Farewell to the Greatest Celtic

I would have expected Queen’s We are the Champions to be sung across Wembley Stadium Sunday evening in London but instead it was the equally familiar strains of Sweet Caroline as the English Women’s soccer team ‘brought it home’ by winning the 2022 UFEA Cup beating Germany 2-1. It was the first English victory in a major international soccer competition in 56 years. So, tip of the hat to the Lionesses for bringing the Cup home to the land which invented football.

As promised in yesterday’s blog, today we honor the passing of someone as famous as Nichelle Nichols and her character, Lt. Uhura. It, of course, is Bill Russell, perhaps the greatest champion in the history of any American professional sport. According to his New York Times obituary, “Russell was the ultimate winner. He led the University of San Francisco to N.C.A.A. tournament championships in 1955 and 1956. He won a gold medal with the United States Olympic basketball team in 1956. He led the Celtics to eight consecutive N.B.A. titles from 1959 to 1966, far eclipsing the Yankees’ five straight World Series victories (1949 to 1953) and the Montreal Canadiens’ five consecutive Stanley Cup championships (1956 to 1960).” In addition to his run of eight consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) championships, he won one championship in 1957 and then ended with two more in 1968-69, for a total of 11 professional championships in 13 years. He was also a five-time MVP and 12-time NBA All-Star. In 1980, he was voted as the best NBA player of all time. In other words, he was the best of the best.

But it was for his work on and off the court in support of racial justice and equality which will always be his most lasting legacy. I will not detail the bigotry and hate Russell was subjected to while in Boston as a player. Suffice to say, it was a disgusting as anything you can image. Or as Russell said, “a flea market of racism.” Yet Russell was somehow able to stand above it and not simply persevere but be a national leader. “He took part in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was seated in the front row of the crowd to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to Mississippi after the civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered and worked with Evers’s brother, Charles, to open an integrated basketball camp in Jackson. He was among a group of prominent Black athletes who supported Muhammad Ali when Ali refused induction into the armed forces during the Vietnam War.”

Russell was also instrumental in opening up head coaching positions for black athletes and others. In addition to his greatness as a player, he was inducted a second time into the Basketball Hall of Fame, as a coach. Marc J. Spears, writing in Andscape, said his “second induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach who made history as the NBA’s first African American head coach. He led the Celtics to two titles as a player-coach and also coached the Seattle SuperSonics and Sacramento Kings. He “was not the first Black head coach in professional sports, but he had the greatest impact as the first to be chosen, in 1966, to lead a team in one of America’s major sports leagues. Fritz Pollard, a star running back, had coached in the National Football League, but that was in the 1920s, when it was a fledgling operation. John McLendon coached the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball League in 1961-62, but the A.B.L. was a secondary attraction.” As noted, he led the Celtics to two additional NBA titles in 1968 and 1969 as the team’s player coach.

John Doleva, president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Basketball Hall of Fame, said of Russell’s induction as a coach he “made it known that it was important to him that the museum continue to induct Black pioneers and overlooked legends. “He saw over time that we were making the right moves in terms of African American players before him,” Doleva told Andscape in a phone interview. “There was evident widespread support of him being enshrined as a coach. Being the first African American coach was something to celebrate. He was a man of few words later in his life, but he quietly appreciated what we were doing. But he also gave me the look that there was more to do, which I took with enthusiasm.””

I cannot think of a greater tribute to Russell than the one which came from then President Barack Obama who awarded Russell “the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, at the White House in 2011, honoring him as “someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men.””

Right about now Red Auerbach is probably twirling a stogie in anticipation of lighting it up after another classic matchup between Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in the great beyond. Farewell Bill Russell for a life well lived.

Categories
The Ethics Experts

Episode 128 – Bianca Forde

In this episode of The Ethics Experts, Nick welcomes Bianca Forde, Head of Ethics & Compliance (Americas). Former Federal Prosecutor, Bianca M. Forde, Esq., is an attorney, activist, and global compliance executive. Her personal and professional observations led her to author the book, Prosecuted Prosecutor: A Memoir & Blueprint for Prosecutor-led Criminal Justice Reform, in which Bianca provides incisive instruction on how to reimagine and redefine the prosecutor’s role in the U.S. legal system.

Categories
Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 1 – Tigger and Sales

This week I begin a five-part series on compliance as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters who live in the Hundred Acre Woods: Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga & Roo, and Piglet. This episode begins with Tigger and the sales function’s role in compliance.

Tigger first appears in the House at Pooh Corner when he arrives at Pooh’s doorstep in the middle of the night. Tigger takes up residence with Kanga and Roo. He becomes great friends with Roo, and Kanga treats him like she does her son. Tigger seems to have boundless energy, often too much energy for some of the other denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood. Rabbit, who is constantly exasperated by Tigger’s constant bouncing; Eeyore, who is once bounced into the river by Tigger; and, finally, there is Pooh’s good friend Piglet, who always seems a little nervous about the new, large, bouncy animal in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Tigger seems like the epitome of a top salesperson. He is very confident, has quite an ego, and has a high opinion of himself. He always seems to have great energy and optimism, and though always well-meaning, he can also be mischievous, and his actions have sometimes led to chaos and trouble for himself and his friends. Tigger often undertakes tasks with gusto, only to realize they are not as easy as he had originally imagined. Tigger, unique as ever, refers to himself not as a tiger but as a “Tigger”, and when he introduces himself, he announces the proper way to spell his name, and that is “T-I-double-Guh-Er”, which spells “Tigger”.

Tigger seems like a great way to think about sales incentives from the compliance perspective. Much like Tigger, most sales folks have their hearts in the right place, even if their actions cause trouble for themselves and others.

At the end of the day, Tigger is good-hearted, even if his over-exuberance can sometimes lead to misadventures. If you properly incentivize your sales team, you will hopefully keep their over-exuberance into being simply good-hearted as well.

Join me tomorrow when I consider Kanga, Roo and the Compliance Ombudsman.

Categories
Career Can D0

A Seamless Path to the IT Industry with Jubee Vilceus

 

In this episode of Career Can Do, Mary Ann Faremouth chats with Jubee Vilceus. Jubee is Managing Partner at Yellowtail.tech, an organization that helps interested career seekers without an IT background get jobs in the industry. Jubee shares how Yellowtail.tech prepares its students with training and real-world experience.  

 

 

In recent times, many companies have been reorganizing, cutting back, and even closing down, which have left many people without jobs. People are now trying to decide how they’re going to transfer their skills or get into something else entirely. The demand for skills in the IT industry is very real and very high in this digital age, and Yellowtail.tech is helping close the gap by training interested persons with no IT background or education to speak of. 

 

Certification at Yellowtail.tech can take 6 to 9 months depending on which program you choose. However, Jubee advises, it’s a year long commitment. Not only do you need certification and skills, but you also need hands-on experience to apply the knowledge you’ve gained. For this reason, Yellowtail.tech also supplies its students with access to internships.

 

Resources

Jubee on the web | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn

 

Faremouth.com

 

Categories
The ESG Report

Corporate Culture and ESG with Ty Francis

 

Tom Fox welcomes renowned compliance leader, Ty Francis, to the ESG Report! Ty is the Chief Advisory Officer at LRN; he leads the company’s worldwide ethics and compliance consulting, ESG, and community outreach strategy. In this week’s episode, Ty and Tom discuss LRN’s new report, Assessing Corporate Culture, and how it relates to ESG. 

 

 

The Genesis of the Assessing Corporate Culture Report

Tom asks Ty about the genesis of the LRN report. This is the second report LRN produced; the first one was about activating culture and ethics in the boardroom. Their previous research led the team at LRN to realize that most corporate boards did not understand culture. Ty says, “Over the last 10 years culture is so high on those lists, but when you look further into the survey and ask them what they’ve done to measure this culture, it’s nonexistent.” Therefore, LRN sought to discover the general opinion on culture and ethics compliance and provide a roadmap on how to activate these skills within a company. 

 

Roadmap for Building Corporate Culture

Tom highlights how the report can be used as a roadmap to build culture. Ty says that building corporate culture starts with defining ethical culture. Ethical culture is the codification of what an organization stands for and the systems that support those beliefs; the core architecture should be reinforced by leadership in how they model desired behavior. The second step in building culture is getting to know the most valuable members within your company, in each department. Culture is extremely important for building relationships within a company and allowing people to hear opinions from all sides. 

 

The Relationship Between ESG and Corporate Culture

The culture within a corporate setting has always been an ESG issue. The governance aspect of ESG is directly related to culture as it is something that companies should have been implementing for years. Ty remarks, “It shows the company’s values across the board, and I think when you have a mismatch of what the company says it’s doing and what they are really doing, that can fragment any ability for a company to demonstrate that it is really a forward-thinking, future-expanding company.” The governance is to be upheld by the board, stewards, stakeholders, and managers. He lists five key considerations for boards: 

  • prioritizing culture on the board agenda, 
  • challenging the board’s culture, 
  • mentoring and monitoring, 
  • articulating the desired culture, and 
  • establishing clear communication.

 

Looking Ahead

Acknowledging the new legal and regulatory requirements, public pressure and the evolution of thinking surrounding corporate culture, Tom asks Ty if he believes that boards will maintain the corporate culture into 2025 and beyond. Ty believes these pressures will force boards to manage and maintain the corporate culture. 

 

Resources

Ty Francis | LinkedIn | Twitter

LRN | LRN Report – Assessing Corporate Culture | LinkedIn | Twitter | LRN Report – Benchmark of Ethical Culture |

 

Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

Mary Inman on the Current State of Whistleblowing


In this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report, I am joined by Mary Inman, partner at Constatine Cannon. We look at recent developments in whistleblowing and how the Ukraine War has increased the visibility of whistleblowers. Highlights of this podcast include:

  1. Whistleblower Reward Program at the US Treasury Department/FinCEN – what is its relevance to corruption, anti-money laundering and the Ukraine conflict.
  2. The House Committee on Financial Services voted to strengthen the U.S. Treasury’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) whistleblower program.  What does this mean for this  nascent program?
  3. How does a minimum whistleblower reward threshold, whistleblower incentives and injects more certainty into the Anti-Money Laundering whistleblower program.
  4. How does expanding AML whistleblower rewards to cover laws applicable to Russian sanctions, Congress is enlisting the help of the private citizenry.
  5. Lisa Monaco recently spoke about the government relying on corporations to ID instancesof money-laundering and other activities to help enforcement Russia economic sanctions and broader trade sanctions. Do you see private citizen or other whistleblowers as a key component of this fight?
  6. How has the Ukraine War raised the profile of whistleblowers and whistleblowing?
  7. Starting with SOX, then Dodd-Frank and the AML Law of 2020 has the US government began to understand whistleblowers as a key component in the fight against fraud, waste and abuse.
  8. Has the government embraced these same strategies and tactics in the wider fight against corruption?
  9. Tribute to Chuck Grassley for his advocacy of whistleblowers.

 Resources
Mary Inman on Constantine Cannon website