Tom Fox

Envelopes stuffed with cash and entire industries poised to take action against the first sign of whistleblowing are just two of the hallmarks of the endemic corruption that bedevils the entire Greek economy. What can be done when compliance isn’t just absent in a country, but actively avoided as a matter of tradition?

As the SEC concludes its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation into suspected illegal activity by former SAP International Vice President of Global and Strategic Accounts Vicente Garcia for bribery and corruption in sales to certain government officials in Panama, we are seeing some clear signs about where FCPA enforcement will be headed into 2016 and beyond.

Last week the Swiss government announced that it had found improprieties in the conduct of the Malaysian government’s sovereign wealth fund, 1Malyasia Development Berhad. The problem for the government of Malaysia is that the sovereign wealth fund is headed by the country’s Prime Minister, who had over $700 million deposited in a personal account. If corrupt governments cannot escape scrutiny in this former haven of banking secrecy, it will be a huge step forward. But could it also mean a lateral move for corrupt governments to another known tax haven?

Recently, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would begin demanding to know the names of folks behind the shell companies, which ultra-wealthy foreigners use to hide behind multimillion-dollar real estate purchases. Efforts by the U.S. Treasury Department to police more closely large cash purchases of real estate as a method for money laundering are an important step toward combatting terrorism. But more work remains to be done.

February 1 is a date that all U.S. and EU compliance practitioners need to circle. It’s the deadline for the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission to reach a deal regarding the transfer of data from EU countries to the United States. As of now, the two still can’t agree on how U.S. spy agencies monitor Europeans’ digital profiles. And if no agreement is reached, the movement of data from Europe to the United States could cause the initiation of an investigation and make compliance with any internal investigation around the FCPA much more challenging.

How did the collection of Big Data somehow run afoul of European anti-trust regulations? The Man from FCPA takes a look at one of the more puzzling regulatory decisions to come out of the Eurozone recently, and at what it means for compliance officers everywhere.

When the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act became law years ago, it was never intended to be used as a tool to fight terrorism. But as recent terror activity has illustrated, corruption and terrorism go more than hand in hand; the first helps to create the second. And as we look for more innovative ways to secure the world against terror, addressing its root enabler—corruption—is an area where even compliance officers can do their part.

Image: We often hear of a rogue employee who is really to blame for a major corruption scandal, but how often do bad apples really cause the problem? And how much is a wider corporate culture—perhaps even one that allows for, or encourages, rogue actors—a more likely source of problems? FCPA blogger Tom Fox examines the recent Tesco accounting corruption scandal.