FCPA professor Mike Koehler goes through the highlights of the New York City Bar Association’s recent FCPA report called “The FCPA and its Impact on International Business Transactions – Should Anything Be Done to Minimize the Consequences of the U.S.’s Unique Position on Combating Offshore Corruption?”
Transaction Monitoring: Fighting Corruption and Protecting National Security
November 22, 2011
In his Compliance Nuts & Bolts column this week, Thomas Fox suggests that companies adopt tips from the bank sector with regards to transaction monitoring to ensure that corporations’ anti-corruption and anti-bribery efforts are not wasted.
Anti-Corruption Compliance Program Benchmarking Survey Indicates More Real-time Monitoring Among Other Things
October 20, 2011
Jeff Kaplan reviews the noteworthy results from a benchmarking survey completed last week with more than 100 companies participating in the survey. Among other things, more than half of the respondents instituted requirements for anti-corruption monitoring, an encouraging step sign since that is key to any effective corporate compliance program.
Top Emerging Compliance Risks for Multinationals
October 17, 2011
John “The Fraud Guy” Hanson recently attended a conference where more than 20 multinational organizations openly discussed the current and possible future compliance risks to their organizations. He reveals the the top areas that were identified as potential future compliance risks.
Changing A Culture of Corruption in India
August 15, 2011
A not-so-secret secret: your people in India do not much care about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or the U.K. Anti-Bribery Act. Sure, they will go through the motions of compliance, primarily because they want to keep the good jobs you offer. But it hasn’t been real.
That said, the culture might be changing. Founder of ELG and senior advisor at Global Compliance Steve Priest shares a story about his recent trip to India involving one man’s hunger strike to end corruption and the country and business world’s reaction.
U.S. and U.K. Anti-Corruption Enforcement Moving Forward – Part 2
July 22, 2011
After accessing the landscape of the anti-corruption initiatives in the U.S. on Wednesday, Carolyn McNiven and Sarah Marquis takes a detailed look at the U.K.’s landscape with the Bribery Act taking effect.
U.S. and U.K. Anti-Corruption Enforcement Moving Forward – Part 1
July 20, 2011
As has been widely reported in the mainstream and legal media, U.S. anti-corruption efforts have stepped up considerably over the past few years. In the United Kingdom, where existing anti-corruption laws were also infrequently enforced, the passage of the so-called U.K. Bribery Act of 2010, which came into effect on July 1, could signal a more stringent enforcement environment.
Since these recent developments suggest that anti-corruption initiatives will be around for the foreseeable future, DLA Piper’s Carolyn McNiven and Sarah Marquis provide an assessment of the enforcement landscape is in order. First up, an analysis of the latest in the U.S.
Anti-corruption Law: As Aggressive Enforcement Efforts Continue, Countertrends Begin to Emerge
July 18, 2011
The battle against international corruption continues to intensify, with U.S. authorities imposing multimillion-dollar penalties on companies and seeking prison terms for corporate personnel who violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. On the international stage, all eyes are on the United Kingdom, as the reinvigorated Bribery Act comes into effect, and new anti-corruption initiatives are underway in Russia, China and India.
At the same time, other developments suggest the limits of these efforts. Enforcement of anti-corruption laws by many other developed nations continues to be, at best, lackluster. Defendants are increasingly mounting challenges to the aggressive legal positions taken by U.S. law enforcement authorities as to FCPA’s jurisdictional and substantive provisions, and critics of the current FCPA enforcement environment are beginning to gain a hearing in Congress.
What Are the Essentials For a FCPA/Bribery Act/OECD Compliance Program?
May 17, 2011
In a recent article entitled “Bribery and Corruption Compliance: the Playing Field Levels,” Timothy Coleman and Paul Lomas, attorneys from the law firm of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, discuss what they term the “tectonic shift” in anti-bribery and anti-corruption compliance internationally. The authors posit that several factors have all acted to place “new burdens” on companies to have the highest standard of anti-bribery corruption programs in place. They then propose 10 essential elements of an anti-bribery and anti-corruption compliance program.
The Need for Risk-Based FCPA Compliance Assessments
October 1, 2010
In a time of dwindling funds, growing risks, and increased government targeting of companies that cut compliance budgets, a proper anti-corruption assessment is a vital first step in creating a cost-effective compliance program.
