Categories
Compliance and Coronavirus

Hugh Bigwood on Coronavirus as an Opportunity


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 Hugh Bigwood, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at EverCare.
Some of the topics include:

  • How risks have been turned upside down during Covid-19.
  • Why is storytelling even more important now?
  • The time is now for resetting your compliance focus and priorities.
  • You have a downturn in reporting. What does it mean?
  • Always keep pushing the fundamentals.
Categories
Great Women in Compliance

The Great Women in Compliance Book Preview


Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, co-hosted by Lisa Fine and Mary Shirley.
As many of you know, Mary and Lisa have been working on a book that will be coming out before the holidays and will be the first title from CCI Press. The “GWIC Book” (the title will be announced soon), is a compilation of submissions from women in compliance sharing wit, wisdom and experiences from their work and lives.
This process was new to Mary and Lisa, and they provide some insight into the process of being a first-time author up until this point. They talk about the importance of having a good publisher and editor as they had with Sarah Hadden of CCI Press, and how they were guided and supported through this process. They also talk about how the GWIC Book is a companion to the podcast, and that it is about women and their experiences in ethics and compliance as opposed to substantive guides and information.
They also talk about their biggest surprises, what they learned about themselves and the GWIC community (spoiler alert: it reinforced what an enthusiastic and supportive community we have); and a little bit about the book release and launch events.
Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.

Categories
Compliance Into the Weeds

Herbalife FCPA Enforcement Action


Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast which takes a deep dive into a compliance related topic, literally going into the weeds to more fully explore a subject. In this episode Matt and Tom go into the weeds to look the recently announced Herbalife FCPA enforcement action. Some of the issues we consider are:

  • Why were the facts so egregious?
  • How high up in the organization did the corruption scheme go?
  • Why was the Board’s performance so abysmal?
  • Was the head of Internal Audit in on the bribery scheme?
  • What was the role of short-sellers in bringing this massive fraud to light?

Resources
See Matt’s blog posts on Radical Compliance
Herbalife Pays $123M on FCPA Charges 
See Tom’s 3-part blog post series on the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog
The Herbalife FCPA Enforcement Action, Part 1
The Herbalife FCPA Enforcement Action, Part 2
The Herbalife FCPA Enforcement Action, Part 3

Categories
Daily Compliance News

September 16, 2020-the Bad Actor edition

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Nursing homes run as Ponzi scheme. (NYT)
  • DOJ joins investigation into Tesla. (WSJ)
  • Bribery of GM Board member alleged. (WSJ)
  • NLRB subpoenaed for COIs? (WaPo)
Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

Internal controls for gifts, travel and entertainment


It is reasonable to expect that internal controls over gifts, travel and entertainment be designed to ensure that they satisfy the criteria as defined in company policies. These are narrow, including a definition of the dollar limit, which must not be exceeded for gifts to be permissible, coupled with some subjective criteria such as the legality of the gifts for the recipient and whether the practice is customary within the country where the gift is delivered. The question I focus on is how to enforce the policies so that employees are not free to disregard them at will?The key analysis is whether there are controls in place to enforce the policies and whether those controls are documented. There are four issues to evaluate:

  1. Is the correct level of person approving the payment/reimbursement for the gift?
  2. Are there specific controls, including signoffs, to demonstrate that the gift had a proper business purpose?
  3. Are the controls regarding gifts sufficiently preventative, rather than relying on detect controls?
  4. If controls are not followed, is that failure detected by other internal controls or the compliance protocols?

Internal controls around gifts can be used in a variety of ways in your best practices compliance program. They can certainly be used to detect an issue and perhaps even prevent an issue from becoming a full-blown FCPA violation, however, by using some of the techniques suggested you can move your compliance program to a proscriptive phase where you not only stop an issue from becoming a violation but through identification, you can move towards remediation as a part of your ongoing compliance efforts. The bottom line is good internal controls make for good business processes; if you can move your compliance program’s internal controls forward, you can help make them a part of your financial controls and thereby have a better run company. 
Three key takeaways:

  1. Gifts, travel and entertainment compliance internal controls are low hanging fruit, pick them.
  2. Compliance internal controls can be both detect and prevent controls.
  3. Good compliance internal controls are good for business.
Categories
EMBARGOED!

EMBARGOED! Episode 14: All Lightning, No China

On this episode of EMBARGOED!, Brian and Tim keep their promise to stay China free (for this week, at least) and change things up to bring you an entire Lightning Round-style episode. With the whole world at our disposal (other than China), we cover the following topics in lightning fashion: the latest U.S. advisory on North Korea, the first U.S. sanctions imposed on the ICC, OFAC’s MOU with the State of Delaware, two recent OFAC enforcement actions against an individual and a financial institution, respectively, the latest on Nord Stream 2 and Venezuela, and, finally, a wild card segment featuring our first foray into sanctions trivia.

Like what you hear? Please subscribe! * Apple Podcasts * Spotify *  Amazon Music  * Google Podcasts * Stitcher
Questions? Contact us at podcasts@milchev.com.
EMBARGOED! is not intended and cannot be relied on as legal advice; the content only reflects the thoughts and opinions of its hosts.
EMBARGOED! is intelligent talk about sanctions, export controls, and all things international trade for trade nerds and normal human beings alike, hosted by Miller & Chevalier Members Brian Fleming and Tim O’Toole. Each episode will feature deep thoughts and hot takes about the latest headline-grabbing developments in this area of the law, as well as some below-the-radar items to keep an eye on. Subscribe for new bi-weekly episodes so you don’t miss out!
Timestamps:
0:10 Introduction and Roadmap
A Full Episode of Lightning Round!
4:49 North Korea Advisory
9:27 International Criminal Court Sanctions
17:13 OFAC Memorandum of Understanding with Delaware
21:18 OFAC Settlement (Individual)
25:26 OFAC Settlement (Russia/Ukraine/Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas)
30:00 Nord Stream 2
36:44 Latest Venezuela Sanctions
41:20 Wild Card!
51:55 Final Thoughts
***Stay sanctions free.***

Categories
The Ethics Movement

Converge20- Alyson Van Hooser – Employee Engagement: Are You Prepared for a Gen Z Workforce?


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 Alyson Van Hooser, Partner at Van Hooser Associates. We visit about her panel at Converge20 on Employee Engagement: Are You Prepared for a Gen Z Workforce? 
Alyson is one of the most dynamic speakers around. She coaches business leaders on how to lead Gen Z’ers and coaches Gen Z’ers on what it takes to succeed in business. You will walk away from her presentation on concrete action steps to take going forward. For more registration and information on Converge20, click here.

Categories
The Compliance Life

DeAnna Nwankwo on CCO Skills


The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is DeAnna Nwankwo who served as Corporate Compliance Officer for Core Laboratories from 2003 May 2020. In that capacity, she led Core Laboratories ethics and compliance activities.
In this second episode, we take up the some of the skills, tasks and roles that Deanna had as a CCO. She believes one of the key things that any CCO can and should do, one of which is engage in and preach integrity. It is important to understand conflict management as a every CCO will be called upon to manage conflicts. While you must be detail oriented and have good problem-solving skills, a CCO must be comfortable navigating the grey zone.

Categories
The Affiliated Monitors Expert Podcast

The Marriage of Independent Monitors and C&E Programs

Today,  I visit with Vin DiCianni, CEO and founder of Affiliated Monitors, Inc. In this episode I visit with DiCianni on the marriage of independent monitors and compliance and ethics programs. DiCianni said that the evolution away from strict regulatory compliance to a more ethics-based compliance has been one of the most significant advancements in independent monitors over the history of AMI. Early on AMI had independent monitorships in the health care industry around such issues as billing and coding. From there, AMI began to address other issues such as codes of conduct and conflicts of interest. So AMI was well suited to move into a more direct ethics-based compliance independent monitorship as the first decade progressed.
DiCianni said that over the life of AMI there have been two Memos released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) which have directly impacted the selection of independent monitors and their application. The first was the Morford Memo, released in 2008. In this Memo, the selection criteria for independent monitors was first laid out, including the need for subject matter expertise and independence and integrity of the monitor.
The second was the Benczkowski Memo, released in 2018, which discusses limiting the use of monitors to certain situations where they might be warranted. However, it does give a company the incentive to go out and evaluate their own ethics and compliance programs, compelling them to strengthen those programs so that if they are ever confronted with an investigation or a self-disclosure to the DOJ, the company can demonstrate it has a strong compliance and ethics program and perhaps get special consideration.

Categories
Daily Compliance News

September 15, 2020-the VW Monitorship edition


In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Monitor says VW has kept promises. (NYT)
  • Corbat pushed out? (WSJ)
  • Rio Tinto faces tough sailing. (FT)
  • A new corporate culture? (FT)