It’s finally Spring. Someday, all of this snow in Boston will melt. Someday.
These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
The Fraudster Next Door by Scott Greenfield in Simple Justice
Whether an epidemic of white collar crime exists in Utah isn’t clear. There isn’t much of an epidemic of any type of crime these days, but that only serves to lower the bar on what’s needed for hyperbole. Regardless, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the need for a registry. Are white collar criminals (which covers a vague but broad panoply of offenses) so prone to recidivism that we must watch them, know where they are every minute of the day, keep them away from our children portfolio?
Doctor “No” Versus Doctor Practical by Michael Volkov in Corruption, Crime & Compliance
The attitude of “No” can have disastrous consequences on a compliance program. If company executives and managers view the compliance function as an obstacle to promoting business opportunities, executives and managers will not call or visit the compliance staff.
Court Strikes on Insider Trading, and Congress Lobs Back by Peter Henning in NYTimes.com’s DealBook
The legislative proposals go much further than just overturning the approach to tipping liability adopted by the appeals court in the Newman case. They jettison much of the law of insider trading that has developed over the last 35 years, since the Supreme Court first dealt with the issue in Chiarella v. United States. That approach focuses on breaching a duty of trust and confidence to the source of the information.
But the legislation would create confusion about how much trading would potentially violate the law. The Senate bill creates a gray area about what types of information would be subject to the prohibition. It allows trading on information derived from “publicly available sources” but does not define them.
Ethics Resource Center and Ethics & Compliance Officer Association Join Forces
The ERC is America’s oldest nonprofit advancing high ethical standards and practices in public and private institutions, and the ECOA is a member‐driven association for practitioners responsible for their organization’s ethics and compliance and programs. The combination of ERC research and benchmarking and ECOA’s professional membership organization is unique in the industry.
We’re asking the wrong question about police shootings by Radley Balko in the Washington Post
We shouldn’t be asking if the police actions were legal or within department policy; we should be asking if they were necessary. Or if you’d like to use a word with a bit more urgency behind it, we should ask if they’re acceptable.
Bells and Wall is by Lucyna Andrzejewska
