Overseas whistleblower hotlines still flummox corporate compliance officers on both sides of the Atlantic, nearly a year after French authorities first questioned the legality of the hotlines in that country and sent a cornerstone of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance into jurisdictional limbo.
In particular, some tensions still appear to exist between French data protection laws and whistleblower requirements under SOX, which has prompted French authorities to provide additional guidance on the issue. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Union, meanwhile, are still giving their own guidance on how to comply both with SOX and European data privacy rules.
