Implement What You Know with Confidence
Discover action-based tools that provide simple steps for program improvement or robust plans for new ways of doing business.
Your ethics and compliance program is an ecosystem of moving parts. New laws and regulations, new lines of business, new geographies, mergers and acquisitions become part of a growing enterprise that your compliance ecosystem must support.
Effective compliance programs are able to deftly navigate these complexities because they have built strong foundations that were developed with the nature of the compliance industry in mind.
This section will give you the expert advice and programmatic best practices to ensure the first steps you take to develop your program are in the right direction. Or if your program is more mature, these resources and insights will give you the necessary guidance to course correct and improve your program’s foundation at whichever stage it is in.
Chapter 2 of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guide for Compliance Professionals
The FCPA world is littered with enforcement actions against companies for the most basic of compliance failures – those around gifts, travel and entertainment (GTE). Learn how to survive with Tom Fox.
Chapter 2 of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guide for Compliance Professionals
The FCPA world is littered with enforcement actions against companies for the most basic of compliance failures – those around gifts, travel and entertainment (GTE). Learn how to survive with Tom Fox.
6. Take a Look Behind Your Own Curtain
GTE issues not only arise in the FCPA context, but also for U.S. companies under their own internal conflict of interest policies. If there is large GTE provided to your employees from your vendors, there may be a conflict of interest or simply the appearance of impropriety. This is why such GTE must be reported and often times pre-approved before the vendor GTE spending occurs.
Something as simple as your security logs for visitors can provide significant insight into these discrepancies. If there is a log entry notation that a vendor came to your facilities on a certain date at any time between 11 AM to 2 PM to see a certain employee, cross-reference to see if that employee reported a GTE receipt in the form of a lunch or other gratuity. Another method would be to consider the GTE spends on comparable departments. If there is a large discrepancy, this could be a red flag which requires a further investigation.
*Based on the Lucent FCPA enforcement action, https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2007/lr20414.htm
**Based on the ABB FCPA enforcement action, https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp18775.pdf
***Based on the Diageo FCPA enforcement action, https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-158.htm
Illustration by Dex Novak
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