Events
Webinar: Monitoring Your Third Parties -- Digging into Distributor and Agent Risks December 15, 2020, 12 Noon EST Sign Up HERE Government enforcement actions against companies for anti-corruption, sanctions, money laundering and accounting misconduct often focus on third-party risks. And for good reason -- government enforcement actions almost always cite
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The Microsoft FCPA settlement, while not significant in the total penalty of approximately $25 million, provides some important instructions concerning distributor and re-seller risks and mitigation strategies. Here are five important lessons learned: Discount Controls and Customer/End User Pricing: Microsoft agreed to provide significant discounts based on false
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Microsoft finally resolved its FCPA enforcement action with a whimper. Notwithstanding prior suggestions that Microsoft’s investigation uncovered global conduct, Microsoft’s liability focused primarily on Microsoft’s conduct in Hungary. Even with the tailored settlement agreement, DOJ and the SEC reiterated robust expectations surrounding third-party distributor networks, particularly
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Managing your third-party risks requires a wide-angle view of your third parties. What do I mean by that? Companies are hyper-focused on identifying risks during the onboarding process, the use of automated platforms to organize and conduct such screening, and continuous monitoring through an automated platform. Such
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The Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) recently settled a long-active enforcement action with Epsilon relating to alleged violations of the Iran Sanctions Program. After a mixed decision from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, OFAC negotiated a $1.
Podcasts
In June 2018, the SEC announced an FCPA settlement with Beam Suntory for violations in India. Beam's settlement totaled over $8 million. Beam's conduct involved illegal payments made through third-party representatives to increase Beam's sales, product placement and secure appropriate registrations and approvals
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After a lengthy investigation conducted by the SEC, Beam Suntory agreed to pay $8 million to settle FCPA violations in India. (Copy of SEC order Here). Beam’s settlement took over 5 years from initial disclosure to resolution – a long-time to say the least. Interestingly, there has been no
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Third-party risk dominates the anti-corruption compliance landscape. And for good reason – companies do not exercise significant control over their third parties, at least in comparison to company employees. I know this is obvious but from a theoretical standpoint a company has greater legal authority over the conduct of
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Any fool can know. The point is to understand. – Albert Einstein Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. – Albert Einstein This week I am posting a five-part series on FCPA compliance issues. While there have been many advances in
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The Department of Justice finished 2017 with two significant FCPA enforcement actions, and fittingly, one was a corporate settlement and another was an individual criminal guilty plea. The Justice Department’s final FCPA enforcement actions for 2017 included an interesting settlement with Keppel Offshore and Marine Ltd. (KOM), a Singapore
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As the compliance function has matured, Chief Compliance Officers have built important relationships with related functions that are critical to the compliance function. Over the last few years, we have seen the Justice Department and the SEC focus on company invoice to payment functions as a key area of concern