The effort to unseat embattled Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff is receiving criticism because it is really an effort by her even more corrupt rivals to grab power. While that may be correct, does it matter, asks Editor Bill Coffin. Or is it just a handy excuse for giving Rousseff and her cronies a pass?
Bill Coffin
Posted inUncategorized
The compliance side to Obama’s new tax incentives
At the end of 2015, President Obama signed into law a number of federal tax incentives for businesses to encourage various hiring, training, and investing practices. But there are special compliance considerations that come with all of these programs. CW Editor Bill Coffin offers a closer look.
Posted inInternal Controls
Are you a Top Mind?
Image: Compliance Week is profiling some of the brightest and most influential thought leaders in the world of governance, risk, and compliance as part of our inaugural Top Minds project—a series of in-depth profiles of corporate compliance officers, advisors, regulators, academics, and other experts to better understand how they view the world of compliance, what they think tomorrow’s greatest challenges and opportunities will be, and what lessons they have learned over the course of their careers. Best of all: You can be part of it by nominating a Top Mind candidate today at TopMinds@complianceweek.com.
Posted inEthics & Culture
Living in glass houses can be a good thing
A recent visit by CW Editor Bill Coffin to a building with no solid walls, and a chance encounter with one of the world’s wealthiest people offered a compelling case for the pursuit of transparency in both the literal and figurative sense.
Posted inEthics & Culture
The cost of integrity
Image: At the Global Ethics Summit, GE General Counsel and SVP Alex Dimitrief talked about what it means to promote a culture of integrity and the true costs of ethical lapses. When a business goes astray, it’s not a call for added workflows or approvals, he said. It’s a sign that somebody failed to do the right thing and, most likely, somebody else failed to report it. It’s simple, but not always easy.
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
No matter who wins the Presidential race in November, compliance officers might lose
After watching the most recent Democrat and Republican Presidential debates, one begins to wonder what the next President will seek to achieve on various regulatory fronts. Between candidates’ promises to regulate more strongly, or to deregulate entirely, it looks like no matter who wins in November, compliance officers are poised to lose.
Posted inRegulatory Enforcement
Glass walls and black curtains
The death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia—and the scuttlebutt surrounding it—underscores the deep level of secrecy that surrounds the Supreme Court and how it operates. Meanwhile, compliance officers know only too well the price to pay for a lack of transparency. Maybe it’s time for the Supreme Court to play by the same rules it is likely to apply to the world of compliance.
Posted inFrom the Archive
Blind moviegoers file suit for being left in the dark
It’s the kind of legal case that causes groans across social media these days: a group of blind moviegoers sue AMC theatres for discrimination because it failed to accommodate the moviegoers’ special needs. On the surface, the lawsuit might seem ridiculous, but when you take a closer look, there is more to this lawsuit than might first appear.
Posted inData Privacy
Apple, the FBI and a terrorist’s iPhone
As the FBI continues its investigation into the deadly San Bernadino terror attack from last December, it has run into an unlikely adversary in Apple, which has refused the Bureau’s requests to defeat the security measures of one of the terrorists’ iPhones. While the legal struggle over this raises the larger question of how much liberty should be sacrificed in the name of security, at stake for compliance officers is whether or not there can ever be true data security should Apple be forced to do the FBI’s bidding.
Posted inEthics & Culture
Winter is coming
It is easy to see data that is slightly off and to accept it, but what happens when you start accepting data that deviates from your deviation? It sounds crazy, but it happens all the time. Perhaps one of the best ways to combat this kind of creeping non-compliance is to establish your cultural principles clearly, to say them loudly, to believe them truly, and to wear them on your sleeve.