These are some of the compliance related stories that recently caught my attention.
Ebola tragedy is also a story of graft by Richard L. Cassin in the FCPA Blog
One reason the fatality rate is so high — up to 90% in some regions, according to WHO — is because intensive care facilities are needed to administer treatments but are “rare in west Africa.”
Although an estimated $3 trillion is spent worldwide on heath services every year, WHO said the money “is a powerful magnet for corruption.”
How Do I Respond to a Wells Notice? in The Securities Law Blog
There is no legal requirement for a regulator to provide a Wells Notice to you, however it is the practice of the SEC and FINRA to provide such notice. Procedurally, the SEC and the FINRA Staff (the people you are dealing with during the investigation) do not have the authority to commence proceedings. They need to obtain approval to commence proceedings. The approval process is handled without any input from the prospective defendant.
Dodd-Frank Anti-Retaliation Provisions Do Not Protect Overseas Whistleblowers by Kevin LaCroix in the D&O Diary
However, based on a recent Second Circuit decision, prospective foreign whistleblowers thinking about making a whistleblower report had better be prepared to watch out for themselves, as according to the appellate court’s August 14, 2014 decision in Liu Meng-Lin v. Siemens AG (here), the Dodd-Frank Act’s whistleblower anti-retaliation protections do not apply extraterritorially — that is, they do not protect whistleblowers outside the U.S. This ruling obviously could dampen the interest of prospective foreign tipsters from making whistleblower reports.
Compliance, Ethics and The Godfather by Adam Turteltaub in the SCCE’s Compliance and Ethics Blog
But one line from the film stands out above the rest because it’s the line that is probably the most oft-recited in business, and the line that has often permeated people’s thinking: “It’s not personal. It’s just business.” For the record, the actual line is “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”
This line gets used a lot in jest, but also when people are discussing business decisions. And there’s a great deal of risk there, starting with the presumption that because Michael Corleone said it in The Godfather it’s somehow a valid rule of business. As seductive as his character is, let’s not forget that he ran a criminal syndicate, which is not a business likely to win awards for its ethics and citizenship. Last I looked, they didn’t have a compliance and ethics program that met the standards in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.