FCPA Compliance Report – International Edition

As Tom and Jay prepare for the December holiday season, they consider data privacy, an FCPA trial, the Moonves scandal, give personal remembrances of and say farewell to George H. W. Bush and all while reviewing the week’s top compliance and ethics stories. Topics include:

1.    Compliance Week devotes an entire issue to data privacy. 2.    What are some common pitfalls in 3rdParty due diligence?

3.     Did Jho Low bribe US government officials? 4.    Can banks improve their AML programs without fear of enforcement? US regulators say yes. State of New York-maybe. 5.    How will Goldman Sach’s role in the 1MDB scandal test the DOJ? 6.    Hong Kong’s former home secretary was convicted of FCPA violations bribing African officials on behalf of a Chinese energy company. 7.    More commentary on modifications to the Yates Memo and what it means for the CCO. 8.    The investigation into Les Moonves and his conduct at CBS is damning. 9.    Great Women in Compliance premiered on the Compliance Podcast Network this week. 10.  Interested in learning some compliance lessons through the movies? Tom and Jay begin a new podcast series Popcorn and Compliancewhere they consider compliance lessons while indulging in their love of the movies. 11.  Tom and Jay pay tribute to George H. W. Bush.

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit our sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com. 

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In this inaugural episode of the FCPA Compliance Report-International Edition, I have Carlos Ayres, a partner in Madea, Ayres and Sarubbi in Sao Paulo. We discuss an  interesting development from the Odebrecht corruption scandal, federal prosecutors in Brazil and ten other countries recently announced they had agreed to cooperate in ongoing investigations surrounding the company. The Odebrecht case involved bribery and corruption allegations reaching multiple countries throughout the Americas. Now  reports indicate that officials from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Mexico, Peru and even the notoriously corrupt Venezuela, along with the European nation of Portugal, have agreed to “start a combined task force with bilateral and multilateral investigative teams to coordinate a probe” of the company. We also discuss recent reports which indicate show companies in Brazil are taking this approach in response to the country’s more aggressive enforcement against endemic corruption in commercial businesses. This is partly in response to the allegations and investigations brought forward by Operation Car Wash and the attendant Odebrecht anti-corruption enforcement action. Jorge Abrahão, president of Brazil’s Ethos Institute, a corporate social responsibility organization said “We are witnessing a big change in Brazil—there is an understanding in society now that whoever doesn’t take the issues of corruption and transparency seriously will not have a place in the market in the future.

For More Information on these topics see my blog posts:

 A South American Response to Corruption Companies now doing compliance in BrazilCarlos Ayres can be reached via email at carlos.ayres@maedaayres.com.

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In this episode I visit with Jonathan Armstrong on his views on the new DOJ Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs. Armstrong provides a detailed analysis of some of the key differences between how compliance is operationalized in the US as opposed to the UK and EU countries. He explains how the enhanced requirements for root cause analysis, risk assessments and investigations and the supplemented requirements to tie back into the ongoing compliance monitoring and updating, could run afoul of UK and EU data protection and data privacy requirements.  He also considers what a non-US company, subject to the FCPA what should look to as a best practices compliance program to best protect the organization. Finally explores just how far does all of this go? He provides on statistic that puts a huge bow on the difficulties going forward. 

For the Cordery Compliance article see the following, US Department of Justice on Evaluation of Corporate Compliance : how does it compare to UK Bribery Act 2010?

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In this episode I visit with Luciana Silveira, a PhD candidate who is studying the FCPA and how it is has affected international trade flows. Some of the questions she is considering include the following: Was US business abroad affected? Did US companies decide to change their foreign business strategy because of the FCPA? After so many years of the law, what is the private sector overall opinion about the FCPA?

Silveira believes the answers to these questions  are neither straightforward nor simple. To that end, the PhD research she is developing will hopefully provide us with some new and updated answers, as well shed more light to the impacts of the FCPA to US international trade. Equally importantly, she is using the FCPA as reference to my studies on potential impacts of the Clean Company Act, a similar anticorruption legislation that came into force in Brazil in January 2014. To complement a quantitative analysis regarding merchandise trade flows, she is using a 15-questions survey (available at https://ldosilveira.typeform.com/to/uhtKYZ). It is confidential, and there is no question that requires strategic corporate information. She hopes that you will participate as all input is welcome and encouraged.

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In this episode I visit with Carlos Ayers on steps you can take to make your compliance program more effective to employees in Latin America. This includes such things are localizing your training and presentations, consideration of local laws, use of language and regionalizing your approach. 

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In Episode 3 of Compliance Man Goes Global podcast of FCPA Compliance Report International Edition, I am joined, as always by Timur Khasanov-Batirov, a practitioner who focuses on embedding compliance programs at high-risk markets. We tackle two concepts: Corporate Concept #1. On practice compliance program is something, which is needed solely to compliance folks. Nobody else in corporation really cares Corporate Concept #2- “In-house compliance team never possess sufficient resources

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Welcome to Episode 4 of Compliance Man Goes Global podcast of FCPA Compliance Report International Edition. In this episode, we will focus on typical myths and mistakes regarding compliance trainings. We will do it in plain language so to say and in the simple game form. Moreover, to make the podcast handy and more appealing we attach respective illustration from the Compliance Man illustrated series, created by Timur Khasanov-Batirov.

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