Posts Tagged ‘FCPA’
FCPA Probe Into Digicel Closed
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…
Read MoreSo Much Anti-Corruption Compliance News!
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…
Read MoreEurope Forms Anti-Corruption Enforcement Team
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…
Read MoreTwo Examples of Compliance Issues in Trump 2.0
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.…
Read MoreFCPA and ‘Under Pressure From the President’
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…
Read MoreMore Musings on FCPA Enforcement
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…
Read MoreTrump Halts FCPA Enforcement
OK, the inevitable has happened. President Trump has issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to halt all enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and devise new enforcement guidelines for future prosecution. Let’s all take a deep breath, and then move on to consider the implications for corporate compliance programs. Is Trump’s anti-anti-corruption…
Read MoreJustice Department Policy Changes, Part II
We now have more clarity on attorney general Pam Bondi’s plan to overhaul Justice Department enforcement priorities — and yes, it’s going to be a big retreat from holding corporations accountable for certain types of misconduct, while the department spends more time prosecuting drug cartels, illegal aliens, and organizations with DEI programs. Bondi first announced…
Read MoreNew AG Signals FCPA Retreat
Well that didn’t take long: on the same day that Pam Bondi was sworn in as the next U.S. attorney general, Bondi issued a flurry of policy memos that will have the practical effect of taking several big steps back from enforcement of corporate misconduct laws. Bondi arrived at the Justice Department on Wednesday afternoon…
Read MoreAAR Settles Intriguing FCPA Case
Here’s a Christmas present for compliance professionals! AAR Corp., an aviation services company, has agreed to pay $55.6 million to settle civil and criminal charges that the company bribed government officials in Nepal and South Africa in the 2010s — and is giving the rest of us some points to ponder on Justice Department credit…
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