Fresh Intel on Corruption Risk

Intel

OK, so the Trump Administration is taking an ownership stake in Intel, and now senior officials say the Administration might take more stakes in defense contractors and other businesses as well. Obviously this is all nuts because, ya know, socialism is bad — but could we also pause to consider the corruption implications here?  Like,…

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Two Telling Moves From SEC

SEC

The image of the Trump 2.0 Administration is starting to emerge at the Securities and Exchange Commission! On Tuesday the agency both muscled out the head of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and dropped FCPA charges against two former executives of Cognizant Technologies — acts that, taken together, send a clear signal of where…

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No, the FCPA Is Not ‘Back’

fcpa

Folks, we need to have a conversation about all these legal bulletins, marketing emails, and conference agendas declaring that enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices is now somehow “back,” simply because the Justice Department released guidelines the other week explaining how it will consider FCPA enforcement from here forward.  Snap out of it. FCPA enforcement…

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The New FCPA Era Arrives

fcpa

Well, the Justice Department has published its much-anticipated guidelines for future enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — and honestly, they’re a bit anticlimactic. Nothing in the new policies should surprise anyone who’s been paying attention, and nothing in them should change your compliance program all that much. The policy changes came in two…

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FCPA Probe Into Digicel Closed

Digicel

The Justice Department has closed an FCPA investigation in a Caribbean telecommunications business, the second such closure since President Trump ordered a pause on all FCPA enforcement two months ago. The company in question is Digicel, headquartered in Jamaica and offering a range of mobile phone and internet services across the Caribbean. Digicel had first…

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So Much Anti-Corruption Compliance News!

corruption

We’ve seen a flurry of news in anti-corruption compliance this week — and while not all of it is bad, nor does it mean an end to corporate ethics and compliance, lots of it is rather disheartening. Let’s take a look and try to make sense of things. First is news from the Securities and…

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Europe Forms Anti-Corruption Enforcement Team

corruption

Stay on your toes, compliance officers! Britain, France, and Switzerland have announced the launch of a new anti-corruption taskforce, meant to keep up the pressure against corporate bribery and corruption even as the Trump Administration retreats from it. The leaders of the U.K. Serious Fraud Office, the Parquet National Financier in France, and the Office…

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Two Examples of Compliance Issues in Trump 2.0

Trump

Today we have two more examples of what ethics and compliance in the Trump 2.0 era might look like: one demonstrating the need for compliance capabilities right now, the other suggesting the ethics and integrity pressures companies could face in the future — and both worth compliance professionals’ attention, because folks, this stuff is coming.…

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FCPA and ‘Under Pressure From the President’

fcpa

One of the great puzzles (to me, at least) about President Trump’s pause of FCPA enforcement was why he might want to allow U.S. companies to engage in corruption with foreign government officials. Now we can conduct a useful thought experiment, courtesy of the news that BlackRock is buying two ports that control access to…

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More Musings on FCPA Enforcement

fcpa

I wanted to share more thoughts today about President Trump’s order to pause all enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Lots of corporate compliance professionals have been talking about it — and while nobody has any clear sense yet of what comes next, we do have a better sense of the important questions to…

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