Posts Tagged ‘Justice Department’
Lessons From Justice Dept Meltdown
You may have noticed that the Justice Department’s ethical reputation blew apart last week — shards of integrity streaking across the stage, leaving a miasma of unprincipled conduct looming over attorney general William Barr’s office. By now you probably know the story. Last week Barr intervened in the sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, self-professed dirty…
Read MoreThe FCPA Threat That Wasn’t
The corporate compliance community had a surprise moment of mainstream media attention on Friday, when Trump Administration chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters the Administration is “taking a look at” the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and is considering potential reforms. This led to a wave of speculation on Twitter and the press that the…
Read MoreCooperation Policy for Sanctions Violations
Compliance officers have a new cooperation credit policy from the Justice Department to consider, this one addressing sanctions and export control issues. It differs just enough from other cooperation policies we’ve seen from the Trump Administration that compliance officers need to give this one more attention. The policy was announced last Friday by David Burns,…
Read MoreNew Guidance on Inability to Pay Penalties
The Justice Department has published fresh guidance about how it will evaluate a company’s claims that it can’t afford to pay monetary penalties, for all you legal and compliance officers trying to convince everyone that your firm lives in the poorhouse. Assistant attorney general Brian Benczkowski announced the new guidance Tuesday while giving a speech…
Read MoreDOJ Hints at New Enforcement Ideas
The Justice Department is considering new approaches to handle companies that can’t pay monetary penalties as part of a corporate misconduct settlement; and is also warning securities and commodities traders to step up the data analytics they do to uncover market abuses. So said deputy assistant attorney general Matthew Miner during a speech he delivered…
Read MoreFacebook, Power, and Antitrust Issues
Compliance officers have a lot to consider about this week’s news that Facebook will pay $5.1 billion in penalties and implement a raft of procedures to improve its privacy compliance. Above all, however, consider this: the market didn’t care. It didn’t. While we were all busy analyzing what Facebook’s settlements with the Federal Trade Commission…
Read MoreNext: New False Claims Act Guidance
Another day, another piece of guidance from the Justice Department about corporate compliance programs — this time, explaining how companies might win cooperation credit when facing violations of the False Claims Act. The Civil Division of the Justice Department posted the guidance Tuesday afternoon. The the material hews closely to what the Criminal Division has…
Read MoreNew Compliance Evaluation Guidelines
The Justice Department released Tuesday a fresh set of guidelines on how prosecutors should evaluate corporate compliance programs: a much longer document, with more narrative explanation about what the Justice Department considers important. Compliance professionals should prepare to obsess over it like last Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode. Assistant attorney general Brian Benczkowski unveiled the…
Read More$25M to End Cognizant FCPA Case
IT outsourcing firm Cognizant Technologies agreed Friday to pay $25 million in disgorgement and penalties to settle FCPA charges related to bribery in India, while the company’s former president and top legal officer were indicted for their roles in orchestrating the scheme. The settlement included $19 million in disgorgement of ill-gotten profits, plus $6 million…
Read MoreMore DOJ! New Cooperation Policy
More news from the Justice Department on corporations cooperating with criminal investigations: from now on, prosecutors will only insist that companies identify individuals “substantially” involved with the misconduct in question, rather than everyone involved. So says deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who announced the new policy on Thursday at the annual FCPA Conference happening in…
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