Compliance Officer Liability: Three Tales

cco liability

Good lord, compliance community, what happened to us last week? After years as a relatively calm, staid profession, we had three reports of compliance officers accused of misconduct. All are head-scratchers that require more detail, and I suspect we’ll be following them in the future. The coincidental timing of them, however, is nothing short of…

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Ack! CCO Liability Is Back Again!

cco liability

Loyal readers of Radical Compliance know that I don’t give much credit to fears of CCO liability for compliance failures. Outside the financial services sector, the risks to a compliance officer are virtually zero, unless you’re grossly negligent or complicit in the misconduct. Within the financial services world, compliance officers do have more worry—and then…

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Enough About CCO Liability!

VW

Compliance officers should welcome the arrest several days ago of Volkswagen’s head of U.S. regulatory compliance—because, at long last, that action seems to be snapping us out of our misplaced fears of compliance officer liability. The compliance executive in question is Oliver Schmidt, who headed VW’s emissions compliance office here in the United States from…

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Can We Calm Down Over CCO Liability?

cco liability

Thank the lord! Yesterday the SEC fined an investment advisory firm and one of its senior managers for failure to prevent insider trading—and did not fault the firm’s chief compliance officer. Now maybe we can all, finally, step back from the fears over CCO liability that have gripped this profession too much. The firm in question…

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