- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Kyle Brasseur2023-10-12T16:00:00
More corporate enforcement guidance geared to provide companies a path toward penalty reductions or declinations. Reiterated messages regarding the importance of investing in compliance. A slow year for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement. All these trends at the Department of Justice (DOJ) can be easily linked together as part of one larger narrative.
My guess at the result: The DOJ is gearing up for a lot of future “we warned yous.”
The realist in me finds it hard not to believe all the carrots being offered by the DOJ in the past year—greater penalty reduction thresholds, relief related to compensation clawbacks, voluntary self-disclosure incentives—are part of a strategy to strengthen the enforcement stick when companies don’t cooperate. Former Criminal Division head Kenneth Polite Jr. said as much during his keynote address at Compliance Week’s 2022 National Conference.
“Support your compliance programs now—or pay later,” Polite said.
His acting successor, Nicole Argentieri, hasn’t drifted from this stance.
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Nicole Argentieri, acting head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, explained how the actions of Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Holdings coming forward helped bring about the agency’s recent FCPA enforcements against Tysers Insurance Brokers and H.W. Wood.
Christian Nauvel, deputy chief counsel for corporate enforcement in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, said the agency’s focus on national security is “top of mind at the highest levels” and that enforcement numbers are set to increase.
The Department of Justice is sticking with David Fuhr as permanent head of its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit.
Top-of-mind issues addressed at Compliance Week’s Third-Party Risk Management & Oversight Summit, held June 3-4 in Atlanta, included safe deployment of artificial intelligence, assessing vendor viability and sustainability, understanding the role of procurement in risk ranking, the intersection (or lack thereof) between data privacy and cybersecurity, and many others.
Anne Morriss, co-author of “Move Fast and Fix Things,” advises compliance officers to tap into curiosity, communicativeness, and comfort with discomfort to build organizational trust, fast.
Regulators and government agencies often speak to the value of empowered corporate compliance programs to advancing their mission. Why not practice what they preach by empowering compliance among their own ranks?
