My head is full of compliance goodness after spending 2.5 days at Compliance Week 2010. The Mayflower Hotel is a great place for a conference this size, with plenty of places to run into people. Substance The agenda was full of great substantive information from fellow compliance professionals. There were sessions on metrics, social media, [...]
Tag Archives: Melissa Klein Aguilar
Revisions to U.S. Sentencing Guidelines for Compliance Programs
At their April meeting, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to adopt changes to Chapter 8 of the Sentencing Guidelines Manual. That chapter defines an effective compliance and ethics program and has been one of the sacred texts of the compliance profession. Here is my summary of the changes: Changes to §8B2.1 In defining an Effective [...]
SEC’s New Enforcement Cooperation Initiative
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a new initiative encouraging cooperation. They put on a big media blitz. Big enough that they even allowed me to ask a question of SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami. For the first time, the SEC set out how it will evaluate whether, how much, and in what manner to [...]
Compliance Bits and Pieces
Here are some interesting stories from the past week: Compliance Surprises in Cuba’s Closed Economy by Alexandra Wrage on the WrageBlog Companies enjoying any success in Cuba have partnered with savvy locals who guide them through the dense, opaque bureaucracy. Such companies must convince the government that they are there for the long haul. They [...]
Bits and Pieces on Compliance
Here are a few stories and items that caught my eye recently, but I have not had time to build-out to a full post: Role of Federal Sentencing Guidelines in FCPA Cases from the WrageBlog Given the tremendous fines imposed upon Siemens AG and Kellogg Brown & Root LLC (“KBR”) in the past 10 months, [...]
In-House Counsel as Whistleblowers under SOX
Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (18 USC §1514A) expressly authorizes any “person” alleging discrimination based on protected conduct to file a complaint with the Secretary of Labor and, thereafter, to bring suit in an appropriate district court. There is no exception for lawyers or in-house counsel. Recently, the Ninth Circuit tackled this issue in [...]
New Liability Under the FCPA: Control Person Liability
The SEC charged Nature’s Sunshine Products Inc. with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after its Brazilian subsidiary made cash payments to customs officials to get their products imported into the country. The SEC also included two officers of the company in those charges. That part of the case was fairly standard. What was new [...]
Updates to Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations
The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance has updated a bunch of Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations. Here are a few questions that caught my eye, with a snapshot of the answer. Follow the question’s link for the complete answer. There are many more new and revised questions under the Securities [...]
California Adopts e-Discovery Rules
Never mind the budget crisis or handing out IOUs, California has passed its own Electronic Discovery Act. California joins the 30 other states that have decided to include provisions in their rules aimed directly at the discovery of Electronically Stored Information. The Act amends the California Code of Civil Procedure by expressly permitting discovery of [...]
Associational Retaliation Claims
Most companies have some form of non-retaliation policy for employees who make a good faith report of a problem. But what if the company retaliates against someone else instead? That was the situation presented in a recent court case: Thompson v. North American Stainless. A woman and her fiancee worked at the same company. She [...]
Social Media
My social media policies database is available to you.
Affilate
This website uses the Canvas Wordpress theme from WooThemes. (affiliate link)
