Categories
This Week in FCPA

Episode 224 – the White Supremacist edition


As President Trump fumbles through the worst performance ever in a Presidential debate, the NBA Finals and MLB Playoffs are here. Tom and Jay are back to look at top compliance articles and stories which caught their eye this week.

  1.  Sara Kropf admitted to American College of Trial Lawyers. On how she became a lawyer in Grand Jury Target.
  2. Calling a bribe a facilitation payment doesn’t make it legal. Dick Cassin explains in the FCPA Blog.
  3. Tom takes a deep dive into the Sargeant Marine FCPA enforcement action. Part 1-Intro, Part 2-the Enforcement Action, Part 3-the Penalty, Part 4-the Individual Guilty Pleas, and Part 5-Lessons Learned.
  4. Compliance risk around collaboration tools. Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance. Tom and Matt take a deep dive in Compliance into the Weeds.
  5. Can VW change its culture? Mengqi Sun and Jack Hagel in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  6. Is your company (and you as well) ready for the future. Jim DeLoach on how to do so in CCI.
  7. NYC Bar releases recommendation on CCO liability in regulated industries. NYU Compliance and Enforcement Blog.
  8. Jonathan Marks asks “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes”? In his Board and Fraud blog.
  9. This month on The Compliance Life, I am joined by DeAnna Nwankwo. In this week’s Part 4, DeAnna talks about standing your ground when you have to do so as a CCO.
  10. On the Compliance Podcast Network, on 31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program, we conclude this month focuses on internal controls. This week saw the following offerings: Monday– Aseessing internal controls; Tuesday– Gap Analysis; Wednesday– Culture as an internal control. Join us in October for Business Ventures. Note 31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program now has its own iTunes channel. If you want to binge out and listen to only these episodes, click here.
  11. Join Jay and Tom at Converge20. Convercent’s top compliance conference is going virtual this year. Check at the agenda and register here.

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.

Categories
Daily Compliance News

October 2, 2020-the Con Man edition


In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • BitMex in big trouble. (NYT)
  • USOC can be removed under bill. (WSJ)
  • Should employers tell co-workers of a Covid-19 positive employee? (WaPo)
  • What is Trevor Milton-a serial failed entreprenuer. (WSJ)
Categories
The Ethics Movement

Rob Mitchell – Third Party Due Diligence


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 Rob Mitchell. We visit about his panel at Converge20 on Third Party Due Diligence.
Third party due diligence has always been a convoluted undertaking—but increasingly complex business structures and ever-more stringent regulations have upped the complexity tenfold. Join this interactive roundtable for a conversation with Exiger and their client on their comprehensive and holistic understanding of organizational risk and how you can create the same level of understanding with your third parties. For more registration and information on Converge20, click here.

Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

Elements of Good Judgment


 One of the key components for any successful business leader; yet one rarely discussed, is judgment. I was therefore intrigued by a Harvard Business Review article on the topic by Sir Andrew Likierman, entitled “The Elements of Good Judgment: How to Improve Your Decision-Making”.
Most of us have heard, been told or believe that you should always ‘listen to your gut’ and that ‘gut instinct’ is something you either have or you do not. As Likierman noted, “A lot of ink has been spilled in the effort to understand what good judgment consists of. Some experts define it as an acquired instinct or “gut feeling” that somehow combines deep experience with analytic skills at an unconscious level to produce an insight or recognize a pattern that others overlook. At a high level this definition makes intuitive sense; but it is hard to move from understanding what judgment is to knowing how to acquire or even to recognize it.”
Interestingly, Likierman finds it all starts with listening and, more importantly, good listening. Listeners to the podcast series 12 O’Clock High, a podcast on business leadership will recognize that as a key trait for almost any successful business leader. Yet, perhaps even more significant, is that he has found that “leaders with good judgment tend to be good listeners and readers—able to hear what other people actually mean, and thus able to see patterns that others do not. They have a breadth of experiences and relationships that enable them to recognize parallels or analogies that others miss—and if they don’t know something, they’ll know someone who does and lean on that person’s judgment. They can recognize their own emotions and biases and take them out of the equation. They’re adept at expanding the array of choices under consideration. Finally, they remain grounded in the real world: In making a choice they also consider its implementation.”
Likierman identified six key elements of good judgment. They are: (1) learning, (2) trust, (3) experience, (4) detachment, (5) options and (6) delivery. It is important to define each of them and have actionable steps to improve your judgment making skills and help you make some sense of not only ambiguous information but the data, data, and data which will become the basis of many corporate decisions in 2020 and beyond.

Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

The Miller & Chevalier 2020 Latin American Corruption Survey-Part 4, Compliance Program Design and Implementation


Welcome to a special five-part podcast series where I take a deep dive into the Miller & Chevalier Chartered 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 4, I visit with firm Counsel Greg Bates and we explore some of the Survey’s data on compliance program design and implementation. Some of the highlights include:

  • What does the Survey data mean for in-house compliance officers?
  • What trends does the Survey indicate vis-à-vis compliance program data?
  • The Survey had almost 1000 respondents, with a mix of representatives from multinational, local/regional, and public and private companies. Do you see different levels of importance of ABAC compliance programming based on the type of company that responded?
  • What other efforts to manage bribery and corruption risks are you seeing in the Survey data?
  • The Survey was conducted just before Coronavirus hit Latin America. Looking into your crystal ball, how do you think COVID-19 will impact compliance programming in the region?

Join us in our final episode where I am joined by James Tillen and Matt Ellis to take a retrospective look back over the 12 years of Miller & Chevalier’s Latin American Corruption Survey.
For more information on the Miller & Chevalier Chartered 2020 Latin American Corruption Survey, click here. The Survey is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Categories
Daily Compliance News

October 1, 2020-the End of Diversity Training edition


In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Nurse fired for whistleblowing. (NYT)
  • VW tries to change workplace culture. (WSJ)
  • White House tries to stop diversity training. (WaPo)
  • Sara Kropf named to American College of Trial Lawyers. (Grand Jury Target)
Categories
Fraud Eats Strategy

Fraud Eats Strategy Episode 6: Performing a Fraud Risk Assessment and The Unexpected

In this episode, we talk about why this may be exactly the right time to perform a meaningful fraud risk assessment. Fraud risks are like potential explosions. The vulnerability of fraud can lay dormant for years until and unless someone in a position to exploit the control weakness, formulates a rationalization and is off and running. Joining us today is Bruce Dorris CEO and President of Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. The ACFE is a member organization of over 85,000 Certified Fraud Examiners and the world’s largest anti-fraud organization. The ACFE is also a standard setter for anti-fraud and investigative leading industry practices having created many important publications including the Report to the Nations, the Occupational Fraud and Abuse Classification System and the Fraud Risk Management Guide.

Join us each week as we take a deep dive into the various forms of fraud across the world and discuss crime families, penny stock boiler rooms, international money launderers, narco-traffickers, oligarchs, dictators, war lords, kleptocrats and more.

Scott Moritz is a leading authority on white-collar crime, anti-corruption, and in the evaluation, design, remediation, implementation, and administration of corporate compliance programs, codes of conduct. He is also considered an authority in the establishment, training, and oversight of the investigative protocols carried out by financial intelligence, corporate security, and internal audit units.
 

Categories
FCPA Compliance Report Wirecard

Mikhail Reider-Gordon on Wirecard Part 8, Lies, Spies and Wirecard

In the Episode, I am joined by Mikhail Reider-Gordon, Managing Director of Institutional Ethics & Integrity at Affiliated Monitors.  Mikhail’s areas of expertise include technology, privacy, cybersecurity, IP and accountability in artificial intelligence; the global anti-corruption and anti-money laundering regimes; media & entertainment; biotech and the life sciences; the public sector and international law.  She is accustomed to working on extremely sensitive and high-profile matters, both nationally and internationally. In this episode, we explore lies, spies and Wirecard.

Some of the highlights include:

·       Weekly news wrap-up on Wirecard

·       What did BDO find in the Philippines?

·       Why was the Wirecard Board of Directors afraid to meet in a conference room with windows?

·       Why is there no interest in the bankruptcy remains of Wirecard?

·       What did the initial Insolvency Report show?

·       Was Wirecard ever designed to be profitable?

·       The continued adventures of Jan Marsalek.

·       More dirty money.

Categories
The Ethics Movement

Valerie Charles – The 2020 Update to the DOJ’s Corporate Compliance Guidance


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 Valerie Charles. We visit about her panel at Converge20 on The 2020 Update to the DOJ’s Corporate Compliance Guidance.
Valerie Charles is a partner at StoneTurn. In this panel, you will learn how to use this year’s brand-new compliance guidance from the DOJ, to best allocate your limited resources. For more registration and information on Converge20, click here.

Categories
Compliance and Coronavirus

Sam McLane on Identifying and Preventing Burnout


As the Voice of Compliance, I wanted to start a podcast which will help to bring both clarity and sanity to the compliance practitioner and compliance profession during this worldwide health and healthcare crisis. In this episode, I visit with Sam McLane, Chief Technology Services Officer at Arctic Wolf. We discuss tips for navigating this new environment and identifying warning signs even while working remote.
Some of the topics include:

  • Conversations regarding mental health and preventing burnout have recently found their way into massive events like RSA and Black Hat.
  • New barriers created by remote work have made it exceedingly difficult to gauge teams’ mental state, forcing managers to tap into their undergrad PSYC 101 class to analyze physical signs through Zoom.
  • Have you tried identifying exhaustion or frustration from subtle physical cues on video calls? Successfully determined meaning behind the tone of a Slack message? It may be nearly impossible.
  • With the line between work and home no longer a car ride, bus ride, walk; it takes practice to develop the discipline needed for a culture of sustainable productivity at home.
  • Arctic Wolf, a security operations leader, has worked diligently to develop a culture of fluid communication to make it clear that there is no valor in suffering in silence.

For more information on Artic Wolf, click here.