31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program
Episodes
Levels of due diligence
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Due diligence is generally recognized in three levels, each of which is appropriate for a different level of corruption risk. The key is for you to de...
Due diligence
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most companies fully understand the need to comply with the requirements around third-parties as they represent the greatest risks for bribery and cor...
Questionnaire
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The next step in the five-step process is the questionnaire. The term ‘questionnaire’ is mentioned several times in the 2020 FCPA Resource Guide. ...
The business rationale
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 2020 Update stated, “Prosecutors should also assess whether the company knows the business rationale for needing the third party in the transact...
Introduction to 3rd Party Risk Management
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the month of July, I will consider the risk management of third-parties in an operationalized compliance program. As every compliance practitione...
The parameters of privileges
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of privilege in an internal investigation is critical. Two important privileges are the attorney-client privilege and the work product pri...
Miranda and internal investigations: What rights does an employee retain?
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Must an investigator warn an employee that concealing information from company lawyers conducting an internal FCPA investigation could be a federal cr...
How the Yates Memo changed internal investigations
26 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In September 2015, Sally Yates, then Assistant Attorney General, announced the Memo that bears her name (Yates Memo), saying, “we have revised our p...
What leads to a successful Board investigation?
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Now that you have set your Board of Directors, investigations protocol, we consider some of the key factors which will lead to the successful conclusi...
The Board of Directors investigation protocol
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many companies have an investigation protocol in place when a potential compliance violation or other legal issue arises. However, many Boards of Dire...
Some Tough Questions Around Investigations
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You may find yourself in the position that you will have to have some very frank discussions about what to expect in terms of costs and time outlays. ...
How an investigation informs remediation
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is nothing like an internal whistleblower report about a FCPA violation, the finding of such an issue or (even worse) a subpoena from the DOJ to...
Who and When to suspend during an investigation?
19 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who to suspend during any investigation is always a delicate question to answer and is never easy to answer. As the VW emission-testing scandal rever...
Issues in Cross Border Investigations
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In an article, entitled “Internal Investigations, How to Conduct an Anti-Corruption Investigation: Developing and Implementing the Investigation Pla...
The witness interview
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are the characteristics of a good interview in the context of an internal investigation? Is there one technique you can use which will provide yo...
Investigative Challenges
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are some of the top challenges you may well face during an investigation? Beyond the basics, a company must consider the intake process as a star...
The investigation team
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning with the 2015 Yates Memo, 2016 FCPA Pilot Program, 2017 and 2019 Evaluations of Corporate Compliance Programs, with 2020 Update through to t...
Selection of investigative counsel
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Dunne, in a Compliance and Ethics Professional article, entitled “Foxes and henhouses: The importance of independent counsel”, discussed what ...
Preparing for the investigation
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Under Part 1, Section D. Confidential Reporting Structure and Investigation Process, it stated in part, Properly Scoped Investigation by Qualified P...
The Investigation protocol
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Under Part 1, Section D. Confidential Reporting Structure and Investigation Process, it stated in part, Properly Scoped Investigation by Qualified P...
Triage of Internally Reported Allegations
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the things that I learned from the television series M*A*S*H was the need for triage. In the hospital setting, triage is the process of determi...
Internal Reporting and Whistleblowers During Layoffs
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Houston, we have experienced energy companies laying off upwards of 30% of their workforce, both in the US and abroad. Employment separations can b...
Answering DOJ Questions on Confidential Reporting
05 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are some best practices regarding an internal reporting system? The 2012 FCPA Guidance stated, “An effective compliance program should include...
Internal Reporting System Best Practices
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are some best practices regarding an internal reporting system? The 2012 FCPA Guidance stated, “An effective compliance program should include...
Specific benefits of a reporting system-a case study
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is your hotline working for you? In an article, entitled “Promoting Effective Use of the Company Compliance Hotline”, José Tabuena provided an e...
Advantages of an Internal Reporting System
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While it is clear that the government expects companies to have an internal reporting system, there are benefits far beyond putting you in the governm...
Introduction to internal reporting and investigations
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The call, email or tip comes into your office; an employee reports suspicious activity somewhere across the globe. That activity might well turn into ...
Polices on extortion payments
29 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The next area for policies is extortion payments, which not are made illegal under the FCPA. Extortion payments are made for any action which threaten...
Policies for third-parties
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As every compliance practitioner is well aware, third-parties still present the highest risk under the FCPA. The DOJ 2019 Guidance devotes an entire ...
Policies on Facilitation Payments
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From the information provided by the DOJ in Opinion Releases and in enforcement actions, there are several different insights which may be drawn on re...
Enforcement Actions Featuring Facilitation Payments
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the more confusing areas of the FCPA is in that of facilitation payments. Facilitation payments are small bribes but make no mistake about it, ...
The Problem with Facilitation Payments
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The original version of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), enacted in 1977, contained an exception for payments made to non-US officials who pe...
Policies on Political Contributions
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The FCPA states, “The FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions apply to corrupt payments made to (1) “any foreign official”; (2) “any foreign politica...
Policies and Procedures on Charitable Donations
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What should your compliance policy and procedures on charitable donations look like? What should you prohibit or even caution against? The starting po...
Opinion Release guidance on charitable donations
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Opinion Releases can provide valuable information for the compliance practitioner. I agree with the statement found in the 2012 FCPA Guidance that “...
Charitable donation enforcement actions
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When is a rose not a rose? When it is a charitable donation not made for philanthropic purposes and violates the FCPA. This was a feature of the Eli L...
Policies on Travel
15 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Prior to the 2012 FCPA Guidance, the DOJ issued two 2007 Opinion Releases which offered guidance to companies considering whether, and if so how, to i...
Policies and procedures on gifts and business entertainment
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If one were to reflect upon the providing of gifts and business entertainment to foreign governmental officials, one might reasonably conclude that af...
Revising your policies and procedures
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Simply having a Code of Conduct, together with compliance policies and procedures is not enough. As articulated by former Assistant Attorney General L...
Policies and procedures
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are numerous reasons to put some serious work into your policies and procedures. They are certainly a first line of defense when the government ...
Operationalization of your Code of Conduct
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How can you work to operationalize your Code of Conduct as articulated in the DOJ 2019 Guidance? The 2019 Guidance focuses not on whether a company ...
Training on your Code of Conduct
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What about the training on your finalized Code of Conduct? While there have been criticisms of code training, if you consider training as one source o...
Design of your Code of Conduct
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Next is the design of your Code of Conduct. Through attention to detail in the design process, you should be able to come out at the end with a code w...
Code of Conduct: Structure and format
06 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Next comes the evolution of the structure and format of a best practices Code of Conduct. Initially, my experience with this is that they were written...
Code of Conduct
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is the value of having a Code of Conduct? I have heard many business folks ask that question over the years. In its early days, a Code of Conduct...
Clearly articulated written standards
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The written standard requirements have long been memorialized in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which contain seven basic compliance elements that ca...
Introduction to written standards
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The cornerstone of any best practices compliance program is written protocols. This includes a Code of Conduct, policies and procedures. These element...
Conclusion to continuous improvement in a compliance program
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of this month, I have presented a variety of specific tools and techniques for the compliance practitioner to utilize to continuous im...
Use of social media for continuous improvement
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Compliance does not exist in a time-warp vacuum, with compliance programs living in 1977 when the first major anti-corruption legislation, the FCPA, w...
Email sweeps for continuous improvement
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 2012 FCPA Guidance specified, “a good compliance program should constantly evolve. A company’s business changes over time, as do the environm...
Continuous Improvement Through Compliance Program Upgrades
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Continuous improvement can come in many different, shapes, sizes and packages. As with all things compliance, you are only limited by your imagination...
Proactive monitoring for continuous improvement
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are multiple areas in the DOJ’s 2019 Guidance which intersect with the area of continuous improvement. They include the following: Prior In...
Measuring the effectiveness of a compliance program
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Determining effectiveness is a key part of continuous improvement. Yet how to do so still bedevils many compliance professionals. You need to consider...
Using Data For Continuous Improvement
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Vince Walden has posited that “the black box is dead”. He meant that there is no single tool to use to identify high-risk transactions, customer, ...
Big data and continuous improvement
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Consider again the use of big data, this time to facilitate continuous improvement. Alistair Croll, in an eBook entitled “Planning for Big Data” p...
Keeping track of current events for continuous improvement
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Keeping track of current events for continuous improvements a part of the mandates found in the 2019 Guidance. The DOJ clearly expects companies to u...
Monitoring for continuous improvement
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Another mechanism for continuous improvement of your compliance program is through risk-based monitoring. Under the topic of Control Testing DOJ’s 2...
The mock audit
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A program manager in a power plant process group told me about the “mock audit” that his company performs in its power plants across the country. ...
The Integrity Audit
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Yet another way to consider using audit for continuous improvement is through the Integrity Audit. Mary Jo White in an article entitled “What I’ve...
The Fraud Audit
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Consider how a fraud audit using data analytics can help to detect or prevent bribery and corruption where the primary sales force used by a company a...
The culture audit
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is organizational culture? Eric R. Feldman, SVP at Affiliated Monitors Inc. (AMI), has said it comprises the mission, vision and values of an or...
Supply Chain audits
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In my last corporate position, my company was at the compliance forefront because we required compliance related audits for vendors in the supply chai...
Financial health of third-parties
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Continuous improvement can take many ways, shapes and forms. One thing that is most generally not considered is the financial health of the third-part...
Monitoring of third-parties
08 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How can data analytics be used for continuous improvement where the primary sales force used by a company is third-parties? A clear majority of FCPA v...
Auditing of third-parties
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Third-parties still present the highest risk around compliance. Indeed, in the area of third-parties the 2019 Guidance, posed the following question i...
Designing a process for continuous monitoring
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most CCOs and compliance practitioners understand the need for continuous monitoring. Whether it be as a part of your overall monitoring of third-part...
Internal audit and continuous improvement
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Next, we consider how the internal audit (IA) function can be used to facilitate more effective continuous improvement. According to the Institute of...
The compliance audit
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One clear best practices to gauge the compliance culture and evaluate the strength of controls, is to conduct periodic audits to ensure that controls ...
Continuous improvement in a compliance program
01 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this month's podcast series, I consider what techniques to use to create continuous improvement in your compliance program. As the DOJ stated in th...
What does innovation in compliance look like?
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the DOJ Evaluation’s emphasis on operationalizing your compliance regime, innovation is an important tool for you to use in this journey, yet o...
Innovation in Compliance Leadership
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Given the paucity of leadership coming out of Washington during this crisis, I thought it would be a ripe time to consider some innovations in complia...
Innovation in Investigative Due Diligence
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Candice Tal is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Infortal Worldwide, and one of the top experts around on due diligence. In an intervi...
The Regional Compliance Committee
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Innovation can come in various forms for an organization. Innovation can appear in a structural form. You can move compliance more deeply into your or...
Moving Data Science the Last Mile
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is still a tricky area for most legally trained compliance professionals as law schools are far behind the business world in teaching these skill...
Innovation through Originating a Compliance Ecosystem
24 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The compliance profession seems to be an inflection point, moving away from the lawyer-driven written policies and procedures to a more operationalize...
Using Innovation to Break Through Silos
23 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Name any catastrophic corporate compliance failure and every root cause analysis will show there were silos which compliance could not break through. ...
AI as a Competitive Advantage
20 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One thing is certain going into 2020 and beyond is that technology that will improve the efficiency of compliance and will assist in the operationaliz...
Design Thinking for Compliance
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Design thinking is another innovation which can help the CCO move forward in a cutting-edge manner to make a compliance program not only more robust b...
Blockchain will transform compliance
18 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most significant innovations in compliance will come through the incorporation of blockchain into compliance. I see great value proposition...
Superforecasting
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine that as a CCO, you could create a team which might well dramatically improve your company’s compliance and risk forecasting ability, but to ...
The Digital Twin and P&L of One
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How can you use the tools of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics in a best practices compliance program. Vincent M. Walden, a partner at A...
Taming Complexity in Compliance
13 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the lessons we have learned from various Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement actions over the years is how complexity in business ...
Using AI in Compliance Contracting
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the compliance world, consistency is one of the keys to a successful compliance program. One of those areas where consistency is mandated is in con...
Finding compliance patterns in raked leaves
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We previously considered how AI can be used as a business advantage for compliance. The power of AI can extend the more traditional functions of preve...
Four Practices for Delivering an AI Solution to Compliance
10 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Next, we consider the four practices that create the conditions for delivering an AI solution to compliance. Using these four practices can lead to en...
Compliance Capabilities Needed to Use AI Programs
09 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Next we consider the crucial capabilities which a compliance function must have to implement an AI solution. Over the next several pieces, I will use ...
Strategies For and With AI in Compliance
06 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today, I want to consider the article Strategy For and With AI by David Kiron and Michael Schrage. The authors premise is, “A company’s strategy...
The Compliance Advantage of Data
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Department Of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission have both made it clear that they expect companies to be more robust in their use of ...
Skills for Innovating in Compliance
04 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Innovation in compliance is one of my passions for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and compliance practitioner. So much so that I dedicate an ent...
Welcome to ComTech
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What will be the role of AI in compliance going forward? LawTech disrupted the legal profession and reshaped many areas of private practice. I believ...
Innovation strategy for your compliance program
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this chapter, we will consider innovation in compliance from a variety of angles including artificial intelligence (AI) and computer technology (Co...
10 compliance questions to pose to HR
28 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As we end this month on the intersection of HR and compliance, I have developed a series of goals and objectives which you might want to use as a star...
Compliance Gap Analysis for HR
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hopefully you now understand that many of the traditional functions of HR can be seen as compliance internal controls. At every touchpoint in the life...
Compliance culture at the bottom
26 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most important focuses of the DOJ’s 2019 Guidance was around culture. This means how far has the culture of compliance been driven down i...
Operationalizing compliance in the middle
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The DOJ has made clear that middle management is a critical part of any compliance program’s success. While it does all start at the top, with the B...
Promotion to operationalize compliance
24 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The role of HR in corporate compliance programs, is often underestimated. If your company has a culture where compliance is perceived to be in competi...
The exit interview
21 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The exit interview can be a further mechanism to operationalize compliance. This type of interview is used when someone voluntarily departs from a com...
Employment separation Issues
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Employment separation and layoffs can present some unique challenges for the compliance practitioner. Employees can use layoffs to claim that they wer...
Hiring a CCO: Developing the job profile
19 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What should a company do when it desires to hire a CCO? To do so, a company needs to fully understand and appreciate what it needs from such a positio...
Compliance performance appraisal review
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the ways to operationalize compliance and to drive it into the DNA of an organization is through a performance review. Indeed, the 2019 DOJ Gui...