In this episode, I take on a solo pod to discuss and consider the Oracle FCPA enforcement action brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Key areas we discuss on this podcast are:
Resources
For a White Paper on the Oracle FCPE enforcement action, email tfox@tfoxlaw.com
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
The Biden Administration promised a new, aggressive approach to corporate crime. Well, the Justice Department just delivered a new, comprehensive policy that raises a number of issues, some of which are likely to be controversial. The new policy incorporates reforms announced last October that largely centered on prior corporate criminal and civil records, the appointment of independent compliance monitors, and expanding the review of responsible persons in an internal investigation. The Justice Department’s new Corporate Enforcement Policy (“CEP”), however, expands on earlier policy changes but includes some new and far-reaching reforms intended to increase individual accountability and promote corporate culture through financial incentives and deterrence policies. This last idea is a significant expansion of DOJ’s CEP and is sure to reverberate through the business and compliance community. Chief compliance officers face a new requirement for their companies — creating an effective system of carrots and sticks to punish misconduct and increase rewards for ethical behavior.DOJ’s new CEP also lays the groundwork for further consideration of corporate responsibility for preserving electronic messaging, ephemeral services, and other electronic data. DOJ’s discussion in this area reflects DOJ’s frustration with a corporate internal investigation that omits access to electronic data, especially in those situations where employees use personal devices for business-related communications. The revised CEP provides guidance to prosecutors and the business community to ensure individual and corporate accountability through the evaluation of various factors, including (1) Corporate History of Misconduct; (2) Self-Disclosure and Cooperation; (3) the Strength of a Company’s Compliance Program; (4) the Use and Monitoring of Corporate Monitors (including their selection and scope of a monitor’s work).
In this post, we conclude our exploration of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement action involving the now recidivist Oracle Corporation. This enforcement action was concluded with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) resulting in an Order. After having examined the background facts and bribery schemes in some details, we turn to what does it all mean for FCPA enforcement going forward and what lessons can the compliance profession draw from Oracle’s missteps.
Paper Programs Fail
One of the most prominent lessons to be garnered from this matter is that paper compliance programs Do Not Work. That may sound like perhaps the most basic truism in all of compliance but here we are in 2022, looking at a major multinational organization which had a ‘check-the-box’ compliance program around distributors and it eventually bit them in the backside.
After having its first FCPA enforcement action in 2012 involving distributors in India, where deep and unwarranted discounts were used to create a pot of slush funds to pay bribes, Oracle instituted a requirement for a ‘second set of eyes’ outside the business unit for unusual or excessive discounts. According to its policies regarding distributors, a valid and legitimate business reason was required to provide a discount to a distributor. Oracle used a three-tier system for approving discount requests above designated amounts, depending on the product. In the first level, Oracle at times allowed subsidiary employees to obtain approval from an approver in a subsidiary other than that of the employee seeking the discount. At the next level and for higher level of discounts, Oracle required the subsidiary employee to obtain approval from another geographic region and the final level (and for the highest discounts) was from someone at the Oracle corporate headquarters. So far so good.
The problem was there was no requirement for evidence of a business justification to support the requested discount. The Order noted, “Oracle reviewers could request documentary support, Oracle policy did not require documentary support for the requested discounts – even at the highest level.” A statement of why you need a discount without any supporting documents as evidence is simply that – a statement. In other words, there was no way for a higher-level approver to determine if such a request was valid or fraudulent. Ronald Reagan was on to a basic compliance concept when he intoned “Trust, but verify.” Those words still ring true as a basic requirement in any compliance program.
Data Analytics
The Oracle enforcement action emphasized why data analytics is mandatory for any current compliance program. In addition to creating slush funds through discounts to distributors, slush funds were created through fraudulent reimbursement requests for expenses associated with marketing Oracle’s products. If the request were under $5,000, business unit level supervisors at the subsidiaries could approve them without any corroborating documentation indicating that the marketing activity actually took place. In one example from the Order, it noted that an Oracle Turkey sales employees obtained such fraudulent reimbursements totaling approximately $115,200 in 2018 that were “ostensibly for marketing purposes and were individually under this $5,000 threshold.” There was apparently no one looking to see who and how often these reimbursement requests were made by any single employee or approved by any supervisor.
This is as basic a fraud scheme as one can imagine. Think of employee gift, travel and entertainment (GTE) reimbursement where anything over $100 must be preapproved. One BD type or one business unit routinely submits requests after purchases of $99.99 so no preapproval is required. The supervisor approves it, and it is automatically paid to the employee. One reimbursement at $99.99 may not raise a red flag but multiple requests should. The same concept holds true in this situation. However, no one at Oracle was looking at this bigger picture. This is where a data analytics program would pick up such anomalies and flag it for closer inspection and investigation. Oracle appears to have realized this through part of its remediation which included the implementation of a compliance data analytics program moving to proactive auditing.
Internal Control Upgrades
Putting in compliance enhancements to remediate your control failures is a key part to any FCPA enforcement resolution. In this area, there were improvements in the following capacities: (a) in distributor discounting by improving aspects of the Oracle discount approval process and increasing transparency in the product discounting process through the implementation and expansion of transactional controls; (b) in the Oracle procurement process through the increased oversight of, and controls on, the purchase requisition approval process; (c) by the removal of perverse incentives by limiting financial motivations and business courtesies available to third parties; (d) in basic gifts, travel and entertainment policies (GTE) by improving its customer registration and payment checking processes in connection with Oracle technology conferences.
Basic GTE
I cannot believe that in 2022 we are talking about companies that still do not have the most basic GTE policies in force. Since at least 2007, the Department of Justice (DOJ) made clear what was appropriate in business travel, business courtesies and business entertainment. Oracle’s 112 Project decidedly was not as it was designed to appear as a business trip to Oracle’s home office (then in California) related to Oracle’s bid on a project. However, the trip was designed to be a sham to hide boondoggle travel for four government officials. The alleged business meeting at the corporate headquarters lasted only 15 minutes and for the rest of the week, the Oracle BD folks entertained the government officials in Los Angeles and Napa Valley and then took them to a “theme park” in the greater Los Angeles area. Any travel involving government officials or any other covered persons under the FCPA should be submitted to and approved by your compliance function, including costs and the itinerary.
There was much to consider from the SEC enforcement action under the FCPA involving Oracle. We still have not heard from the DOJ. There may be more to come….
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast that takes a deep dive into a compliance-related topic, literally going into the weeds to more fully explore a subject. In this episode, we look at the recently announced SEC Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action involving Oracle. Highlights include:
Resources
Matt in Radical Compliance
Tom in the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
This week we are exploring the 2022 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement action brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) involving Oracle Corporation. As we have noted, Oracle is now a recidivist FCPA violator, having been involved with a similar enforcement action back in 2012. I thought it would instructive to review that prior enforcement action to see what the bribery schemes were, if Oracle lived up to the remediation steps it took in 2012 and what it might all mean for the 2022 enforcement action.
According to the 2012 Complaint, the scheme worked as follows: Oracle India would identify and work with the end user customers in selling products and services to them and negotiating the final price. However, the purchase order would be placed by the customer with Oracle India’s distributor. This distributor would then purchase the licenses and services directly from Oracle, and resell them to the customer at the higher price than had been negotiated by Oracle India. The difference between what the government end user paid the distributor and what the distributor paid Oracle typically is referred to as “margin” which the distributor generally retains as payment for its services. That description sounds like most distributor relationships but this was not what got Oracle into trouble.
The Bribery Scheme
As further specified in the 2012 Compliant, “certain Oracle India employees created extra margins between the end user and distributor price and directed the distributors to hold the extra margin inside funds. Oracle India’s employees made these margins large enough to ensure a side fund existed to pay third parties. At the direction of the Oracle India employees, the distributor then made payments out of the side funds to third parties, purportedly for marketing and development expenses.” The 2012 Compliant noted, “about $2.2 million in funds were improperly “parked” with the Company’s distributors.” To compound this problem, employees of Oracle India concealed the existence of this side fund from Oracle in the US and hence there was an incorrect accounting in Oracle’s books and records.
The 2012 Complaint further noted, “Oracle India’s parked funds created a risk that they potentially could be used for illicit means, such as bribery or embezzlement” and then went on to highlight such an instance which occurred in May 2006, where Oracle India secured a $3.9 million deal with India’s Ministry of Information Technology and Communications. Oracle’s distributor accepted payment from the end user for the full $3.9 million. Under the direction of Oracle India’s then Sales Director, the distributor sent approximately $2.1 million to Oracle, which Oracle booked as revenue on the transaction. Oracle India employees then directed the distributor to keep approximately $151,000 as payment for the distributor’s services. The Oracle India employees further instructed the distributor to “park” the remaining approximately $1.7 million to be used for disbursement towards “marketing development purposes.” Some two months later, an Oracle India employee provided the distributor with eight invoices for payments to third party vendors, in amounts ranging from approximately $110,000 to $396,000. These invoices were later determined to be false. Further, none of these third parties, which were just storefronts and provided no services on the deal, were on Oracle’s approved vendor list.
Failure of Internal Audit
All of the above were in violation of Oracle’s internal policies, however the 2012 Compliant specified that “Oracle lacked the proper controls to prevent its employees at Oracle India from creating and misusing the parked funds” and prior to 2009 “the Company failed to audit and compare the distributor’s margin against the end user price to ensure excess margins were not being built into the pricing structure.” Oracle failed to either (1) seek transparency in its dealing with the distributor and (2) audit third party payments made by the distributors on Oracle’s behalf” both of which would have enabled the Company to check that payments were made to appropriate recipients. Indeed, the scheme only came to Oracle’s attention during an unrelated “local tax inquiry to Oracle’s India distributor”. This sounds reminiscent of HP Germany where a routine Bavarian Provincial tax audit picked up the suspicious payments which lead to a FCPA investigation.
2012 Remedial Steps
However, even with the above listed failures of Oracle’s compliance program, the Company did take Maxim Three of McNulty’s Maxim’s to heart: What did you do to remedy it? The 2012 Complaint indicated that the person in charge of supply chain at the Indian subsidiary resigned and left the company. An internal investigation was undertaken and four employees of the Indian subsidiary who had actual knowledge of the scheme were terminated. Additionally, “Oracle took other remedial measures to address the risk and controls related to parked funds, including: conducting additional due diligence in its partner transactions in India so that Oracle had greater transparency into end user pricing in government contracts; terminating its relationship with the distributor involved in the transactions at issue; directing its distributors not to allow the creation of side funds; requiring additional representations and warranties from distributors to include the fact that no side funds exist; and enhancing training for its partners and employees to address anti-corruption policies.”
So, what exactly did “directing its distributors not to allow the creation of side funds; requiring additional representations and warranties from distributors to include the fact that no side funds exist; and enhancing training for its partners and employees to address anti-corruption policies” entail for Oracle employees and business operations going forward, leading to the 2022 enforcement action? Since the events leading to the 2012 enforcement action were centered in India, one might reasonably assume that Oracle would prioritize all of these remedial steps in India and add more focused monitoring in India to make sure the remediate steps were implemented and followed. In the case of Oracle India, apparently not.
Join me tomorrow where we explore the comeback by Oracle leading to the 2022 enforcement action and explore questions related to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and where they may stand on the Oracle matter.
