DOJ – Gap, Inc. settlement: immigration and employment discrimination.
Tag: DOJ
Welcome to the only roundtable podcast in compliance. The entire gang is thrilled to be honored by W3 as a top talk show in podcasting. In the context of several different stories, the full gang takes into the recent speech by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announcing a shift in enforcement focus by the DOJ. We end with a veritable mélange of shouts outs and rants.
1. Karen Woody looks at it from the SEC perspective and reviews some additional remarks by SEC Chair Gensler on the topic. Karen shouts out to the TV show and pop culture phenomenon Succession.
2. Jay Rosen discusses the speech from the monitorship perspective. Rosen shouts out to dads everywhere by honoring OBS, Odell Beckham, Sr. for getting his son out of Cleveland and to the LA Rams.
3. Matt Kelly gives an overview of the speech and what it all means. Kelly has a Shout Out to People Magazine and Paul Ruud. The Mag named Ruud the ‘Sexiest Man in America for 2021’.
4. Jonathan Armstrong takes a look at the speech from the UK perspective and ties in a couple of recent UK data privacy enforcement actions. Armstrong shouts out and rants about the fraudster Dr. Ruja Ignatova and her fraudulent crypto currency OneCoin.
5. Jonathan Marks talks about this speech will impact internal investigations. He continues his last rant about hotels. This time for booking him into an already occupied room.
6. Tom Fox shouts out to the NFL Fashion Police for fining CeeDee Lamb over $15K for having his shirt tail out during a game while fining Aaron Rogers less than $15K for breaking Covid-19 protocols.
The members of the Everything Compliance are:
• Jay Rosen– Jay is Vice President, Business Development Corporate Monitoring at Affiliated Monitors. Rosen can be reached at JRosen@affiliatedmonitors.com
• Karen Woody – One of the top academic experts on the SEC. Woody can be reached at kwoody@wlu.edu
• Matt Kelly – Founder and CEO of Radical Compliance. Kelly can be reached at mkelly@radicalcompliance.com
• Jonathan Armstrong –is our UK colleague, who is an experienced data privacy/data protection lawyer with Cordery in London. Armstrong can be reached at jonathan.armstrong@corderycompliance.com
• Jonathan Marks is Partner, Firm Practice Leader – Global Forensic, Compliance & Integrity Services at Baker Tilly. Marks can be reached at jonathan.marks@bakertilly.com
The host and producer, ranter (and sometime panelist) of Everything Compliance is Tom Fox the Voice of Compliance. He can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Everything Compliance is a part of the Compliance Podcast Network.
The DOJ obtains a conviction for export of rebreathers without a BIS license. The Kitchen reviews the press release and brings you the summary.
This week I have been writing about the speech Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa O. Monaco gave as a Keynote Address at ABA’s 36th National Institute on White Collar Crime last week (Monaco Speech). Her remarks were noted by many commentators, including on two Compliance Into the Weeds podcasts where Matt Kelly and myself took two deep dives into her speech our podcast. Her remarks reframed a discussion about this Department of Justice’s (DOJ) priorities on white collar criminal enforcement, including under the Foreign Corrupt Practices (FCPA). Her remarks should be studied by every compliance professional as they portend a very large change in the way the DOJ and potentially other agencies enforce the FCPA. This has significant implications for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance professional and corporate compliance programs.
Today, I am going to end with what it all might mean for the compliance professional. First note the emphasis on culture. Monaco’s remarks were, “Now, I recognize the resources and the effort it takes to manage a large organization and to put in place the right culture. The Department of Justice has over 115,000 employees across dozens of countries and an operating budget equivalent to that of a Fortune 100 company. So, I know what it means to manage and be accountable for what happens in a complex organization. But corporate culture matters. A corporate culture that fails to hold individuals accountable, or fails to invest in compliance — or worse, that thumbs its nose at compliance — leads to bad results.” This means that the DOJ will be assessing the entirety of corporate culture. As a compliance practitioner how do you demonstrate culture? Or to phrase the question using the Tom Fox mantra, how did you Document, Document, and Document your culture? Culture obviously starts at the top, but it must imbue and be embedded into an organization.
Equally important is compliance. Here Monaco said, “Let me also be clear: a company can fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders and maintain a commitment to compliance and lawfulness. In fact, companies serve their shareholders when they proactively put in place compliance functions and spend resources anticipating problems. They do so both by avoiding regulatory actions in the first place and receiving credit from the government. Conversely, we will ensure the absence of such programs inevitably proves a costly omission for companies who end up the focus of department investigations.” Note the significance of “company can fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders”.
This is a clear tip of the hat to Caremark and other legal requirements for a compliance program based upon civil statutes. This is not the DOJ saying we will punish a company for simply not having a compliance program. Yet make no mistake that if a company does not have a compliance program, not only will there be a very large chance of regulatory violation such as under the FCPA; if your organization does not have a compliance program, it will not receive credit when the penalty phase comes around. Monaco is pointing out as clearly as she can do so the potential legal costs not only from civil shareholder lawsuits but also from regulatory fines and penalties.
Another area which is new to the compliance function will be the DOJ’s review of all corporate malfeasance when assessing a company’s culture, commitment to compliance and possible fines and penalties. Here Monaco stated, “Today, the department is making clear that all prior misconduct needs to be evaluated when it comes to decisions about the proper resolution with a company, whether or not that misconduct is similar to the conduct at issue in a particular investigation. That record of misconduct speaks directly to a company’s overall commitment to compliance programs and the appropriate culture to disincentivize criminal activity.”
Typically, compliance dealt with anti-corruption compliance, trade compliance, anti-trust compliance and perhaps others. However now a CCO must be apprised of all corporate misconduct as it will be reviewed by the DOJ. For any multi-national organization, that alone will be daunting as how many compliance professionals have visibility into tax, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claims, labor relations issues or the myriad of other legal issues that every corporate faces every day, literally across the globe? Yet Monaco said that prosecutors would look at just that, stating “A prosecutor in the FCPA unit needs to take a department-wide view of misconduct: Has this company run afoul of the Tax Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the money laundering sections, the U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and so on? He or she also needs to weigh what has happened outside the department — whether this company was prosecuted by another country or state, or whether this company has a history of running afoul of regulators. Some prior instances of misconduct may ultimately prove to have less significance, but prosecutors need to start by assuming all prior misconduct is potentially relevant.” This is literally a sea change.
Finally, what might be the changes in how corporations are assessed under the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy, enacted by prior DAG Rod Rosenstein? Will there continue to be a presumption of declination if you (1) self-disclose; (2) extensively remediate; (3) thoroughly cooperate; and (4) disgorge any ill-gotten gains? If there is no presumption, will there be robust self-disclosure? There is nothing illegal about failing to self-disclose but if a whistleblower then steps forward or the DOJ then opens an investigation based upon other sources and it determines a violation has occurred the opportunity for a declination may well be out the window. Moreover, if there is no self-disclosure and the issue reappears or the remediation is not successful, the company now appears to have actual knowledge of a violation, once again potentially increasing the penalty.
As I wrote yesterday, there are many open questions from these changes. One thing is clear to me, the CCO role and job of the compliance function just got much more challenging.
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Monaco Speech: Part 4 – Some Questions
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa O. Monaco gave a Keynote Address at ABA’s 36th National Institute on White Collar Crime last week (Monaco Speech). Her remarks were noted by many commentators, including on two Compliance Into the Weeds podcasts where Matt Kelly and myself took two deep dives into her speech our podcast. Her remarks reframed a discussion about this Department of Justice’s (DOJ) priorities on white collar criminal enforcement, including under the Foreign Corrupt Practices (FCPA). Her remarks should be studied by every compliance professional as they portend a very large change in the way the DOJ and potentially other agencies enforce the FCPA. This has significant implications for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance professional and corporate compliance programs.
Today, I am going to take up some questions that came up for me based upon her remarks. As compliance practitioners know, the first DAG in the Trump Administration announced a major change in FCPA enforcement in November 2017. It was called it the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy and it was incorporated into the United States Attorneys’ Manual. Although it was incorporated into the Manual, it was essentially a rejection of the Yates Memo and incorporating the FCPA Pilot Program from 2016 into a more formal structure.
The FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy set a presumption of a declination for a company that met four requirements. One, voluntary self-disclosure, including disclosure of all relevant facts known to it at the time of the disclosure, including as to any individuals substantially involved in or responsible for the misconduct at issue. Two, timely and appropriate remediation. Third, full cooperation with the DOJ in the investigation. Fourth, no aggravating circumstances which could include “involvement by executive management of the company in the misconduct; a significant profit to the company from the misconduct; pervasiveness of the misconduct within the company; and criminal recidivism.”
My first series of questions relate to the Rosenstein policy. What is now required for a ‘presumption of a declination”? Will a company have to self-disclose not simply those individuals substantially involved or all employees, no matter how high or low in the employee chain? Must those disclosures be at the time of self-disclosure or as facts are developed in an investigation? Recall the Yates Memo mandated that if a company wanted any credit it had to disclose all employees involved in the misconduct. [So much so that the word ‘any’ was in bold, italics and underscored.] Will the DOJ revert back to that standard?
What of Deferred and Non-Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs and NPAs)? Has the DOJ heard the criticism of these settlement mechanisms over the years? Matt Kelly and I catalogued them in the second Compliance into the Weeds podcast on Monaco’s speech. Or has the DOJ decided that there is some type of material defect in these tools which makes any settlement with a DPA or NPA simply ‘a cost of doing business’? Monaco raised these issues in the context of FCPA recidivist or those companies which have a broader history of corporate recalcitrant in complying with laws in general; i.e., tax, environmental, employment and every other law a corporation must deal with both in the US and internationally. Even though her remarks were directed to recidivists and other bad corporate actors, it would not be too far a stretch to see if the DOJ reconsidered such penalties for all those companies which find themselves in a FCPA imbroglio.
What might some changes look like? A couple of recent examples come from areas outside the FCPA context. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a new directive that any company which has one anti-competition violation under its belt will have to return to the FTC for pre-approval of any acquisition. That can be quite a business slow down if you are in a dynamic industry or profession. The other example comes from the world of US banking where the Federal Reserve put a growth cap on Wells Fargo for its behaviors. Once again something like that can be a very large business inhibitor.
The DOJ return to more robust monitorships could be another mechanism. While the monitors now usually concern themselves with the terms of the settlement agreement and whether the company under the settlement agreement is fulfilling its terms; the monitor could take a more active role in an organization, such as review any high-risk transaction or transaction but a certain dollar value. Such an intrusive monitorship would greatly slow down business in any organization. Yet FCPA recidivists do not seem to have gotten the message not to violate the FCPA. Indeed, even some under DPAs and NPAs are not fulfilling their agreed upon obligations. All of these factors could lead to some very different forms of settlement resolutions.
What about Monaco’s remarks around evaluation of all corporate conduct, not simply anti-bribery compliance? Her remarks bear citing in full on this point:
Going forward, prosecutors can and should consider the full range of prior misconduct, not just a narrower subset of similar misconduct — for instance, only the past FCPA investigations in an FCPA case, or only the tax offenses in a Tax Division matter. A prosecutor in the FCPA unit needs to take a department-wide view of misconduct: Has this company run afoul of the Tax Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the money laundering sections, the U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and so on? He or she also needs to weigh what has happened outside the department — whether this company was prosecuted by another country or state, or whether this company has a history of running afoul of regulators. Some prior instances of misconduct may ultimately prove to have less significance, but prosecutors need to start by assuming all prior misconduct is potentially relevant.
Most compliance professionals work very diligently to create a culture around anti-corruption compliance. However now there must be compliance with a much broader set of laws; both in the US and internationally. How many compliance officers even know about these other areas? Further, if there is one resource in the organization who does keep track of such matters, it is usually in the legal department, who are loathe to share that information, even within an organization. How will a compliance professional be aware and then work to ensure compliance in these other areas?
As I said in the introduction, there are lots of open questions. Tomorrow I will sum up what it all may well mean for the compliance professional.
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Monaco Speech: Part 3 – Culture
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa O. Monaco gave a Keynote Address at ABA’s 36th National Institute on White Collar Crime last week (Monaco Speech). Her remarks were noted by many commentators, including on two Compliance Into the Weeds podcasts where Matt Kelly and myself took two deep dives into her speech our podcast. Her remarks reframed a discussion about this Department of Justice’s (DOJ) priorities on white collar criminal enforcement, including under the Foreign Corrupt Practices (FCPA). Her remarks should be studied by every compliance professional as they portend a very large change in the way the DOJ and potentially other agencies enforce the FCPA. This has significant implications for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance professional and corporate compliance programs.
Today, I am going to take up her remarks on corporate culture. They were a small but significant part of her remarks so I will quote them in full. She said,
Now, I recognize the resources and the effort it takes to manage a large organization and to put in place the right culture. The Department of Justice has over 115,000 employees across dozens of countries and an operating budget equivalent to that of a Fortune 100 company. So, I know what it means to manage and be accountable for what happens in a complex organization. But corporate culture matters. A corporate culture that fails to hold individuals accountable, or fails to invest in compliance — or worse, that thumbs its nose at compliance — leads to bad results.
Let me also be clear: a company can fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders and maintain a commitment to compliance and lawfulness. In fact, companies serve their shareholders when they proactively put in place compliance functions and spend resources anticipating problems. They do so both by avoiding regulatory actions in the first place and receiving credit from the government. Conversely, we will ensure the absence of such programs inevitably proves a costly omission for companies who end up the focus of department investigations.
Although we understand the costs that enforcement actions can place on shareholders and others, our responsibility is to incentivize responsible corporate citizenship, a culture of compliance and a sense of accountability. So, the department will not hesitate to take action when necessary to combat corporate wrongdoing. [Emphasis Supplied]
I asked Affiliated Monitors Inc., (AMI) founder Vin DiCianni for his thoughts around these remarks. He said, “Last week’s announcement by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and the Justice Department reignited the agency’s concentration of corporate and individual liability for white collar crimes. In doing so, she emphasized to businesses, their leadership and the attorneys who represent them on the importance of implementing and maintaining strong effective compliance programs and how DOJ will continue to look at these programs going forward.” In other words, the criticalness of culture.
A culture of compliance is the foundation of an organization’s compliance program. It is a measure of how well employees feel empowered to identify, mitigate, and escalate risk within their institution. An institution’s compliance culture is set by the Board and Executive Leadership team. Their messaging should be continuously reinforced in an institution’s risk appetite statement, policies, training and enterprise-wide communications. A strong compliance culture should be evident at all levels of the financial institution and across all three lines of defense.
Tina Rampino, Associate Managing Director at K2 Integrity, laid out some key questions to ask around culture. They included:
- What is the tone that is set from the most senior levels of the organization?
- Are employees motivated by doing any and all business no matter the risk?
- Are they empowered to act with integrity and choose the right business that aligns with their compliance culture?
She went on to relate, “Many institutions have built training and communications programs to help employees understand what the “right business means” – reinforcing an institution’s risk appetite statement, incorporating policies and procedures, and training on red flags and high-risk issues.” She concluded, “A culture of compliance should empower employees, not just in the second line of defense but in all areas of the institution – to think about the risks being presented through their customers, transactions, and products and services and how they can do their part in mitigating risk to the institution.”
We next turned to some of the key actions senior executives and leaders can take to not simply ‘talk-the-talk’ but also ‘walk-the-walk’ of compliance. Senior executives and leaders are responsible for setting the tone from the top which means setting expectations for the importance of compliance throughout the organization and by modeling behaviors for their employees. Rampino details the seven elements of a culture of compliance:
- Tone from the Top.
- Establishing and communicating enterprise-wide policies and programs.
- Defining clear roles and responsibilities across the three lines of defense.
- Ensuring adequate staffing and resources for functions responsible for compliance.
- Designing and implementing a comprehensive compliance training program.
- Establishing compliance incentives
- Creating efforts to embed and sustain a compliance culture.
Monaco had two additional remarks around corporate culture and a culture of compliance that bear repeating. She said, a record of corporate misconduct, even outside the FCPA, “speaks directly to a company’s overall commitment to compliance programs and the appropriate culture to disincentivize criminal activity.” In a remark that tied back to yesterday’s discussion of monitors she said, “Stepping back, any resolution with a company involves a significant amount of trust on the part of the government. Trust that a corporation will commit itself to improvement, change its corporate culture, and self-police its activities. But where the basis for that trust is limited or called into question, we have other options. Independent monitors have long been a tool to encourage and verify compliance.” This last sentence would speak directly to DiCianni’s thoughts that “Unlike the previous administration’s very limited use of monitors, DAG Monaco described the value that integrity monitors bring to oversight for both the department and those entities subject to such oversight.”
Monaco noted she has sat on corporate boards when in the private sector. This experience certainly informs her approach as the DAG. The DOJ will be taking a much closer and in-depth look at corporate culture and whether there is a culture of compliance in any company which finds itself in a FCPA investigation or enforcement action. CCOs and compliance functions need to be ready to have demonstrable and documented evidence of a culture of compliance.
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Monaco Speech: Part 2 – Monitors
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa O. Monaco gave a Keynote Address at ABA’s 36th National Institute on White Collar Crime last week (Monaco Speech). Her remarks were noted by many commentators, including on Compliance Into the Weeds where Matt Kelly and myself took a deep dive into her speech in a rare emergency podcast. Her remarks reframed a discussion about this Department of Justice’s (DOJ) priorities on white collar criminal enforcement, including under the Foreign Corrupt Practices (FCPA). Her remarks should be studied by every compliance professional as they portend a very large change in the way the DOJ and potentially other agencies enforce the FCPA. This has significant implications for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance professional and corporate compliance programs.
Today, I am going to take up the third change announced by Monaco, the use of corporate monitors. I asked Affiliated Monitors Inc., (AMI) founder Vin DiCianni for his thoughts around the remarks on monitors. He said, “For Affiliated Monitors this refreshed approach by DAG Monaco highlights the seriousness which businesses must place on the investment in their programs and in addressing what has for some been a negative experience with a monitor. For those who might be the subject of a monitorship, DAG Monaco recognized that the negativity that has sometimes surrounded monitorships as being punitive, should be seen in a different light bringing value, pointing a way forward and as a solution which has had great success in resolving matters.”
In 2021, we have seen several enforcement actions which seemed quite well suited for monitors.Of course, the DOJ recently announced that some companies have been failing to live up to their settlement resolutions and have proposed the extension of current monitorships. Monaco echoed this sentiment stating, “Recently, two different multinational corporations separately announced that each had received a breach notification from the Justice Department.”
Monaco’s remarks may well have been tailored to these 2021 FCPA resolutions and companies in breach of their settlement obligations when she stated, “In recent years, some have suggested that monitors would be the exception and not the rule. To the extent that prior Justice Department guidance [Benczkowski Memorandum] suggested that monitorships are disfavored or are the exception, I am rescinding that guidance. Instead, I am making clear that the department is free to require the imposition of independent monitors whenever it is appropriate to do so in order to satisfy our prosecutors that a company is living up to its compliance and disclosure obligations under the DPA or NPA. Of course, the decision to use monitors must also include consideration of how the monitorship is administered and the standards by which monitors are expected to do their work. And the selection of monitors will continue to be accomplished in a fashion that eliminates even the perception of favoritism. The department will study how we select corporate monitors, including whether to standardize our selection process across the divisions and offices.”
Monaco went on to explain several reasons for need for the increased use of monitorships. The first is in the area of recidivist offenders. However, this is beyond simply recidivist FCPA offenders and ties into another part of the Monaco speech. It deals with the DOJ taking into account the full panoply of corporate misconduct which might lead to tax investigations, import control enforcement actions or any anti-trust concerns to resolve any FCPA enforcement action. It all seems to me to be around the issue of trust. Monaco stated, “Stepping back, any resolution with a company involves a significant amount of trust on the part of the government. Trust that a corporation will commit itself to improvement, change its corporate culture, and self-police its activities. But where the basis for that trust is limited or called into question, we have other options. Independent monitors have long been a tool to encourage and verify compliance.” If the DOJ cannot trust you to follow the law in some areas, it may not trust you to fulfill your compliance obligations under a FCPA resolution.
Earlier in her speech Monaco talked at length on the importance of corporate culture. She noted, “But corporate culture matters. A corporate culture that fails to hold individuals accountable, or fails to invest in compliance — or worse, that thumbs its nose at compliance — leads to bad results. Let me also be clear: a company can fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders and maintain a commitment to compliance and lawfulness. In fact, companies serve their shareholders when they proactively put in place compliance functions and spend resources anticipating problems. They do so both by avoiding regulatory actions in the first place and receiving credit from the government. Conversely, we will ensure the absence of such programs inevitably proves a costly omission for companies who end up the focus of department investigations.”
When taken as a whole, Monaco’s speech says that once again, the DOJ wants companies to be good corporate citizens. Moreover, it all starts with culture and flows from there. If a company puts making a quarterly number above all else, that becomes the corporate culture and employees will do whatever is necessary to accomplish this goal. Conversely, if the values of the company are to do business ethically and in compliance, that will be taken into account. This ups the ante for corporations which find themselves in an FCPA investigation or enforcement action.
Join us tomorrow when we consider Monaco’s remarks on corporate culture.
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa O. Monaco gave a Keynote Address at ABA’s 36th National Institute on White Collar Crime last week (Monaco Speech). Her remarks were noted by many commentators, including on Compliance Into the Weeds where Matt Kelly and myself took a deep dive into her speech in a rare emergency podcast. Her remarks reframed a discussion about this Department of Justice’s (DOJ) priorities on white collar criminal enforcement, including under the Foreign Corrupt Practices (FCPA). Her remarks should be studied by every compliance professional as they portend a very large change in the way the DOJ and potentially other agencies enforce the FCPA. This has significant implications for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance professional and corporate compliance programs.
The key changes announced in the Monaco Speech were as follows: (1) “today I am directing the department to restore prior guidance making clear that to be eligible for any cooperation credit, companies must provide the department with all non-privileged information about individuals involved in or responsible for the misconduct at issue. To be clear, a company must identify all individuals involved in the misconduct, regardless of their position, status or seniority.” This portends a return to the strictures of the Yates Memo. (2) “The second change I am announcing today deals with the issue of a company’s prior misconduct and how that affects our decisions about the appropriate corporate resolution. (3) The final change I am announcing today deals with the use of corporate monitors.” This final change is a rejection of the strictures laid out in the Benczkowski Memo regarding the DOJ use of corporate monitorships.
Today, I am going to take up the first change, a reinstitution of the Yates Memo requirement that companies turn over information and evidence of any and all employees involved in the illegal conduct. In her speech, then DAG Sally Yates said the following, “Effective immediately, we have revised our policy guidance to require that if a company wants any credit for cooperation, any credit at all, it must identify all individuals involved in the wrongdoing, regardless of their position, status or seniority in the company and provide all relevant facts about their misconduct. It’s all or nothing. No more picking and choosing what gets disclosed. No more partial credit for cooperation that doesn’t include information about individuals.” This statement ties directly into the first point of the Yates Memo, which has the title “To be eligible for any cooperation credit, corporations must provide to the Department all relevant facts about the individuals involved in corporate misconduct.” The Trump Administration DOJ had relaxed this requirement to those ‘substantially involved”. Monaco said some of the reasons for the change included:
- Such distinctions are confusing in practice and afford companies too much discretion in deciding who should and should not be disclosed to the government.
- Such a limitation also ignores the fact that individuals with a peripheral involvement in misconduct may nonetheless have important information to provide to agents and prosecutors.
- The department’s investigative team is often better situated than company counsel to determine the relevance and culpability of individuals involved in misconduct, even for individuals who may be deemed by a corporation to be less than substantially involved in misconduct.
- To aid this assessment, cooperating companies will now be required to provide the government with all non-privileged information about individual wrongdoing.
What this means in practice is that an internal investigation must focus on individuals from the start of an investigation, regardless of whether the investigation begins civilly or criminally. Moreover, once a case is underway, the inquiry into individual misconduct can and should proceed in tandem with the broader corporate investigation. Delays in the corporate case will no longer suffice as a reason to delay pursuit of the individuals involved. For the CCO or compliance practitioner, this means the entire focus of your investigative protocol must now change. Previously an investigation was to determine how conduct that might have violated the FCPA occurred and then focus on how to remedy it. The first step a CCO or compliance practitioner would take when sufficient evidence was developed would be to fix the problem so that it did not occur going forward. If there were compliance program or internal control weaknesses, they would be immediately fixed so that neither the original perpetrators could continue the conduct but also so others could not take advantage of any such structural weakness.
The reinstitution of this requirement by DAG Monaco demonstrates that the DOJ expects you to bring them information about all individuals who can be prosecuted going forward. Monaco’s remarks also demonstrate the DOJ expects you to turn over your own employees. This means DOJ want companies to give up senior executives involved in illegal conduct. As Yates said back in 2015 “We’re not going to be accepting a company’s cooperation when they just offer up the vice president in charge of going to jail.” One of the difficulties around the FCPA requirement for a criminal prosecution or intent. How do you determine intent in a manner where senior executives may never have been involved directly in a transaction? Does this mean insufficient tone at the top will somehow morph into intent for a FCPA prosecution? It appears that the DOJ is either no longer comfortable in companies and their counsel making this decision or wants to take over this assessment.
In addition to these prongs, I found point three from Monaco very interesting. The DOJ has been criticized by commentators and even the bench for the turning over of the internal investigation process to companies and their hired law firms. This prong 3 may be a way for the DOJ to respond to these critiques. It should be the DOJ which makes the assessment of potential culpability and potential enforcement, not internal investigators. It bears reiterating Monaco on this point, “The department’s investigative team is often better situated than company counsel to determine the relevance and culpability of individuals involved in misconduct, even for individuals who may be deemed by a corporation to be less than substantially involved in misconduct.”
Whatever the reason for the change, the Biden Administration is rejecting the light touch of the prior administration as led by former DAG Rod Rosenstein and later Brian Benczkowski. It appears this could be the first step to try and beef up FCPA individual enforcement and drive home the message that this administration is serious about the fight against international corruption. There were other developments from the Monaco Speech that I will take up in subsequent blogs this week.
Where I end up this week in this series, I do not yet know. Every time I read the speech, I see new angles for exploration. However, I promise that next up I will look at the rejection of the Benczkowski Memo’s default position that no monitorship would be used in FCPA enforcement actions or settlements.
In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:
- When a dysfunctional culture turns deadly.(WSJ)
- DOJ changes enforcement posture. (Compliance into the Weeds)
- More trouble for the SFO. (Ethixbase)
- Did Trump SPAC deal skirt laws? (NYT)
