Posts Tagged ‘internal control’
Fresh Lessons on Management Fraudsters
One of the largest PR firms in the world is going through its own minor PR crisis this week, with its former CFO pleading guilty to embezzling $16 million from the firm over the course of nearly a decade. Frank Okunak, who ran financial operations at PR firm Weber Shandwick from 2009 to 2019, pleaded…
Read MoreWhy Segregation of Duties Matters
Today I want to circle back to that crazy case from Georgia, of a corporate lawyer disbarred for fabricating employee complaints so he could then draw up phony settlements and embezzle the money. The misconduct alone is astonishing, but we should also ask: what are the internal control failures that would allow something like this…
Read MoreSEC Hits Software Firm on Accounting Fraud
The Securities and Exchange Commission has fined a New Jersey software firm $12.5 million for accounting fraud in the 2010s, in a case offering multiple lessons about poor management and internal control failures in the tricky world of software sales. The company in question is Synchronoss Technologies, which sells software to telecommunications firms. The SEC…
Read MoreFCPA Reminders From Stericycle
Stericycle, the global medical waste giant, has agreed to settle FCPA charges against the company for widespread bribery in Latin America, giving the rest of us another case with lessons about the risks of rapid international growth and poor corporate culture. The settlement was announced Wednesday. Stericycle will pay $84 million in penalties to the…
Read MoreKT Pays $6.3M to End FCPA Case
Compliance professionals have quite the FCPA case to consider this week, courtesy of the Securities and Exchange Commission hitting Korea’s largest telecommunications carrier with $6.3 million in penalties and disgorgement for all manner of corrupt practices in the 2010s. The company, KT Corp., has a long history of corruption. KT agreed to settle the SEC…
Read MoreSEC’s Interesting Remediation Example
The Securities and Exchange Commission published a press release Friday afternoon that compliance professionals should welcome: news that a tech startup mired in financial fraud will not pay any monetary penalties, thanks to the company’s extensive cooperation and remediation. We rarely see an announcement like this, where the SEC’s principal point is to discuss its…
Read MoreNotes on Assessing Your Internal Controls
One of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s senior enforcement officials gave a pep talk in Washington this week about the importance of internal controls, and how a company should evaluate its internal controls this winter as the world tries to prevail over the disruptions of covid-19. The official was Matthew Jacques, chief accountant in the…
Read MoreThat Lawsuit Against J.P.Morgan
As you might have already heard (because compliance is such a gossipy profession), last week a former compliance officer for J.P.Morgan filed a lawsuit against the bank, accusing executives there of retaliating against her because she was raising concerns about failures and weaknesses in the compliance program. I spent the weekend reading the complaint, which…
Read More‘Master of Kickbacks’ and Credit Suisse
Compliance professionals have another large FCPA enforcement action to pore over this week, thanks to the perpetually struggling Credit Suisse and several economic development loans for the country of Mozambique that were, quite literally, soaked in corruption. The headline, announced on Tuesday, is that Credit Suisse will pay $475 million to regulators in the United…
Read MoreFood for Thought From Kraft Heinz
We have a fascinating enforcement action from the Securities and Exchange Commission to study, this time against Kraft Heinz Co., which is paying $62 million to settle charges that it committed accounting fraud with a bogus cost-savings scheme. The case is a glimpse into how strategic imperatives can pressure internal controls — and at least…
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