All articles by Tom Fox – Page 27
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Blog
The Swiss Tackle International Corruption
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 ...
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Treasury Moves to Shine a Light on Real Estate Transactions
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 ...
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What Will Wal-Mart Wrought?
Please forgive the mixed tenses in the title but I have been thinking about what the Wal-Mart anti-corruption matter might mean at the end of the day.
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February 1 Deadline for Data Transfer Clarity
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 ...
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Board of Directors and Line of Sight Into Compliance Trends
Image: A board of directors must set the appropriate tone at the top for any organization. Yet it must do more than simply set the tone, sit back, and do nothing. A board needs to take a hard look at the information it is being presented and tell management to ...
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Use of Compliance Data an Anti-Trust Violation in Europe?
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.
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Mike Oxley, the FCPA, and the Fight Against Terrorism
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 ...
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Tesco’s Tone at the Top and the Myth of the Rogue Employee
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? ...
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Compliance Convergence: the Consequences of an Export Control Failure
When a Hellfire missile intended to be shipped from Germany to the United States accidentally ends up in Cuba, more than a few eyebrows raised over it, especially since such sensitive cargo was handled by multiple shipping companies that never seemed to check the manifest or wonder why one of ...
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Are VW Execs Breathing Easier Now?
Image: Senior executives at Volkswagen took a very deep sigh of relief when the Justice Department announced a civil suit (?a suit many say is a cakewalk as opposed to the tougher policy set by the Yates memo) against the company for damages from its emissions fraud scandal. In addition, ...
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Some Costs of Corruption
Image: A recent Financial Times article says that non-U.S. corruption scandals have outpaced those which are U.S.-centric and, FT points out, the companies at the heart of these scandals fared pretty badly from their own transgressions. Inside, FCPA blogger Tom Fox examines the cases of Volkswagen, whose emissions fraud has ...
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Using Social Media to Defend an FCPA Criminal Charge
Image: Social media has certainly changed the way we communicate. Just look at federal securities fraudster Martin Shkreli, known for his extreme social media use, who has continued the practice (not surprisingly) post-arrest. According to the New York Times, Shkreli posts selfie videos “as if the possibility of going to ...
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Reform Starts at the Top for FIFA
Image: You might think in today’s corporate world “tone at the top” would be so well worn that you need not repeat it. Yet, tone at the top apparently did warrant repeating for former FIFA head Sepp Blatter. Earlier this week, Blatter announced he would fight the eight-year suspension placed ...
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Two Courts—Two Decisions on Whistleblower Protections
Image: A recent court ruling found that employees who reported suspected illegal conduct to their employers rather than to the SEC are entitled to the Dodd-Frank Act anti-retaliation protections. The decision, however, conflicts with a prior court decision, where the court refused to give weight to the SEC’s interpretation of ...
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FIFA and Its Banks: Twin Sons of a Different Genus?
Image: Numerous banks, such as BNP Paribas, HSBC, and Standard Chartered, are in talks with the Justice Department about what they knew in connection with the FIFA investigation. In their effort to thwart Swiss secrecy laws, U.S. investigators are trying for more unrestricted access to information in FIFA-concerned bank accounts. ...
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The Watergate Hearings and the VW Internal Investigation
What did the President know and when did he know it? Former Senator Fred Thompson wrote those lines, when he was a staffer on the Senate Watergate Committee. His boss, Senator Howard Baker, then uttered them during the Watergate Hearings. Since that time, these two lines have been a mainstay ...
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The Legacy of Frederick Bourke Rears Its Head
Sometimes it does not take active bribery or corruption by an individual to violate anti-corruption laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is one of the few laws which makes illegal consciously avoiding the actual knowledge of the underlying crime.
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FIFA Internal Investigation: Between Scylla and Charybdis
Image: In theory, U.S. and Swiss authorities are working in tandem to investigate allegations of misconduct by the leaders of the FIFA professional soccer organization. In practice … relations are a bit more complicated, and that leaves the law firm handling FIFA’s internal probe in a difficult spot. CW anti-corruption ...
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Conflicts of Interest in Track & Field: Perception or Reality?
Image: FIFA and NFL football are not the only sports mired in ethical controversy any more; now track and field has entered the race. The latest scandals include allegations of rampant doping among Russian athletes, and a clear conflict of interest from the new director of the sport’s oversight body. ...
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First British DPA Provides Much to Ponder
It has finally come to pass: the first deferred-prosecution agreement under the U.K. Bribery Act. From the role of judicial oversight (greater than that in the United States) to the final statement of facts (much greater than that in the United States), the settlement with ICBC Standard Bank is full ...