Here is this weeks collection of stuff I found interesting, but didn’t blog about:
To Combat Overseas Bribery, Authorities Make It Personal
Dionne Searcy for The Wall Street Journal
“To really achieve the kind of deterrent effect we’re shooting for, you have to prosecute individuals,” Mark Mendelsohn, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, says in an interview.
Cuomo announced two guilty pleas in the ongoing Pay to Play investigation
New York State Attorney General
Raymond Harding, the former chair of the Liberal Party, and Saul Meyer, a founding partner of a Dallas-based firm that advises public pension systems across the nation, both pled guilty to felony securities fraud charges for their involvement in pay-to-play kickback schemes at the New York State Office of the Comptroller and the CRF. “These guilty pleas vividly depict the depth and breadth of corruption involving the New York State pension fund,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “In one case, we see New York’s state pension fund looted to reward a political boss with hundreds of thousands of dollars in improper payments. In the other, we see a pension fund adviser – the outside “gatekeeper” who is supposed to safeguard the integrity of the pension fund process – recommending deals based on pressure from pension officials and politically-connected people.
Cuomo announces legislation to reform state pension fund
New York State Attorney General
Bipartisan Legislation Will Establish Board of Trustees to Manage State Pension Fund, Ban Placement Agents and Create Enforcement Mechanisms to Ensure Compliance
Private Equity LPs Seek to Impose “Best Practices” on Sponsor Community
Geoffrey Parnass for Private Equity Law Review
The Institutional Limited Partners Association, a trade association that represents 220 institutional investors in private equity funds, recently published a set of Private Equity Principles, designed to guide future dealings between its members and the private equity sponsor community. The Association’s members include public and corporate pension funds, endowments, foundations, family offices and insurance companies with more than $1 trillion in private equity funds under management. The publication of the Principles is the first time that a group of influential limited partners has collectively published a set of core requirements for private equity fund documents.
Social Networking Policies – What Does Your Law Firm Have To Say?
Greg Lambert for 3 Geeks and a Law Blog
According to the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics survey on what companies are doing with social networking compliance, there are over 50% of companies that either do not have a social networking policy for their employees to follow, or do not know if they do. After running across a couple of law firm client alerts on this very topic, I thought I’d take a quick look and build an ad hoc bibliography on what attorneys at major law firms are saying lately on this topic.