- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
Spain’s labor ministry fined the Big Four accountancy firms at least 1.4 million euros (U.S. $1.5 million) total for overworking and underpaying their respective employees.
Despite no complaint being lodged by any employee, the Big Four offices were each raided in November after the Spanish Ministry of Labor opened an investigation into the firms’ working practices regarding concerns employees were working longer hours than their employers’ records showed.
In January, Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz warned, “The excesses and abuses of overtime hours are being investigated and the mandate is clear. … No big company, no matter how big, is beyond the law.”
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KPMG accepted the conclusions and record penalties levied against it by the U.K. Financial Reporting Council for the “exceptional” level of deficiencies found to have taken place during the Big Four audit firm’s work at collapsed construction company Carillion.
Recent enforcement cases against food delivery company Glovo and online retailer Amazon in Spain have shone a spotlight on the compliance difficulties associated with engaging workers as freelancers rather than full-time employees.
Big Four audit firm PwC is being sued by one of its employees for more than £200,000 (U.S. $234,000) after he injured himself at a post-work drink event in 2019. The incident is not the first where “team-bonding” efforts have proven problematic.
Nicole Argentieri, acting head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, breaks down where Albemarle, Tysers Insurance Brokers, and H.W. Wood went right—and wrong—on the cooperation credit and remediation fronts as part of their FCPA settlements with the agency.
Pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt, fresh out of its second bankruptcy, was spared having to pay a $40 million penalty levied by the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged disclosure and accounting failures related to its underpaying of Medicaid rebates.
The Department of Justice will increase its efforts to build relationships and foster collaboration with its global counterparts to thwart bribery and corruption under a new strategy.
