These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
Two Games about Gifts for Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week by Ricardo Pellafone in SCCE’s The Compliance & Ethics Blog
You know that your employees are competitive, so you know that a game show is more engaging than a Powerpoint lecture.
But you’ve also got other stuff to do, so spending the time to put together the mechanics and questions for a new game show isn’t going to happen.
And so you end up playing Jeopardy. Again.
Well, not this time. As we head into Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week—and towards the holiday season—here are two ideas for in-person game shows that will help your employees build their judgment on gifts and entertainment. [More…]
Inside Swiss Banks’ Tax-Cheating Machinery by Laura Saunders in the Wall Street Journal
Dozens of Swiss banks have been spilling their secrets this year as to how they encouraged U.S. clients to hide money abroad, part of a Justice Department program that lets them avoid prosecution. It is part of a broader U.S. crackdown on undeclared offshore accounts that has ensnared big Swiss banks such as UBS Group AG, but has received scant attention because it mostly involves little-known firms and relatively small fines. [More….]
DOL supports ESG fund use in 401(k) plans by Greg Iacurci in InvestmentNews
Fiduciaries had been wary of introducing ESG investments — also known by such names as economically targeted, and sustainable, responsible and impact (SRI) investing — to retirement plans due to previous guidance from the department, according to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. A 2008 rule said fund consideration based on factors other than risk and return, such as ESG, should be rare, which set a higher but unclear standard of fiduciary compliance, the DOL said.
That guidance “gave cooties” to impact investing and had a “chilling effect” on its use in plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, said Mr. Perez, speaking Thursday in New York.
According to the new guidance — Interpretive Bulletin 2015-01, which is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Oct. 26 — “fiduciaries need not treat commercially reasonable investments as inherently suspect or in need of special scrutiny merely because they take into consideration environmental, social or other such factors.” [More…]
Yates and Outsourcing Government Investigations by Michael Volkov in Corruption, Crime & Compliance
With the dramatic sea-change from the Yates memorandum, I predict (and fully expect) individuals who end up being prosecuted (civilly or criminally) to challenge more aspects of the corporate internal investigation. As companies conduct internal investigations under the “supervision and direction” of DOJ prosecutors, defendants will seek access to internal investigation documents, notes, and seek to portray outside counsel as agents of DOJ prosecutors.
I recognize that this will be a real stretch but I expect there to be more litigation in this area, under which defendants will claim they need access to such materials in order to adequately defend themselves. [More…]
SEC Faces New Attack on In-House Judges by Jean Eagleshem in the Wall Street Journal
Legislation to give defendants the right to opt out of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house court is expected to be introduced in Congress on Thursday, ramping up pressure on the agency to further reform its controversial tribunal. [More…]