These are some compliance-related stories that caught my eye.
Okay, so this first one is not about compliance, but about the Tour de France that starts on Saturday morning for its three week race across France.
Top 10 Reasons Geeks Should Love the Tour de France in Wired’s GeekDad.
Fraud in Commercial Real Estate: Tips & Red Flags on Money Laundering & Terrorist Financings by Keith Mullen in Tough Times for Lenders
In the late 2006, FinCEN issued a study highlighting money laundering trends in the commercial real estate industry. In the information reviewed for this study, the most commonly reported suspected illicit financial activity associated with the commercial real estate sector is money laundering to promote tax evasion. … This should NOT be a surprise: Federal examiners have issued a 439 page manual on this topic. One good way to jump into the topic is to examine Appendix F to the manual, which contains a nice list of red flags for money laundering and terrorist financing. Here are some of the topics covered in the list –
How ‘Bad Boy’ Guarantees Can Make a Non-Recourse Loan Suddenly Become Recourse by Robert A. Silverman in National Real Estate Investor
Recent court decisions should serve as a warning to borrowers to carefully review the wording of recourse carve-out guarantees in both existing and proposed mortgages, lest they be held fully liable for real estate loans. While “non-recourse” loans typically require carve-out guarantees allowing the lender to pursue the guarantor’s assets in instances of “bad-boy” acts — such as waste, funds misapplication, environmental issues and voluntary bankruptcy filings — the precise wording of the guarantees is crucial.
The Bribery Act – Foreign public officials & why you should care who they are
Certain countries will contain many publicly owned businesses. For example, some corporations take the view that there is strong likelihood that local partners in China may constitute a public official. As a result they err on the side of caution and treat all local partners they deal with in that jurisdiction as state owned enterprises and the people they work for as foreign public officials.
5 Things to Know When Merging Compliance and Ethics Programs by John Martin, Bill Hughes and Edward Applegate in Corporate Compliance Insights
Corporate America has tried the stick and is now trying the carrot approach. Why is it so hard to integrate compliance with ethics? Here are five things to consider when attempting to integrate or combine compliance with ethics.
Creating a “Gap” Analysis and Sharing Issues with Management by Michael Portorti in FCPA Complaince and Ethics Blog
The Gap Analysis document can then be used to track status of deficiencies and used as a source to update Executive Management as necessary. It also can expose bottlenecks and identify potential revisions for controls that need additional tailoring to fit in with the Company’s operational environment. Accumulating deficiencies in this manner keeps all parties up-to-date on remediation progress so overall compliance efforts can move along at an acceptable rate.
