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FCPA Compliance Report

Tom Fox has practiced law in Houston for 30 years and now brings you the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Report. Learn the latest in anti-corruption and anti-bribery compliance and international transaction issues, as well as business solutions to compliance problems.
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Now displaying: Page 22
Aug 18, 2017

Determining effectiveness has been on my mind in large part since the release of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (Evaluation). Obviously the new by-word from the Evaluation is operationalization but a key in determining operationalization is determining your compliance program effectiveness. I put that question to Vincent DiCianni, CEO and founder of Affiliated Monitors and Eric Feldman, SVP of Affiliated Monitors recently. 

Feldman began by explaining that you need to consider both outcomes and outputs. Outcomes will show you the results of specific actions, such as investigations and conclusions to them. DiCianni added that the numbers are attractive because they can form a “straight line” about your compliance program is function. Yet DiCianni cautioned the numbers only give you one view of a compliance program. You also need to consider the qualitative side of the equation. 

This is where outputs are equally important as the form the qualitative portion of determining compliance program effectiveness. More importantly you cannot conflate the two. Feldman explained that hotline data is good example, so if your number of hotline reports drops dramatically, the company may well believe their compliance program is effective. However, Feldman cautioned this could be a tenuous conclusion “because just as easily one could conclude that your culture has taken a turn for the worse, that employees are afraid of retaliation, they don't have faith and trust in the anonymity of your hotline system and therefore they're just not reporting, but things are still going on. In fact, there may be more activity going on”. 

Some important consideration are such softer measures as how employees feel about whether the company is committed to a speak-up culture. Feldman noted that by interviewing employees, you can determine if they feel “comfortable going to their managers and if their managers are involved, going to upper level management, Ethics and Compliance Office, or a corporate reporting hotline if and when they see misconduct, or do they mind their own business and look the other way because they're afraid something will happen to them?” The best way to make that determine is through in person interviews.

Another key way to determine if you have any effective compliance program is to see if there is a correlation about what a company says on paper on its vision, mission and values around compliance. Here a key metric is performance incentives, bonuses, promotions and assignments. Feldman explained you must ascertain if the financial packages are based solely on hitting your numbers “or are there elements that balance out the financial measures with ethical measures, integrity measures. For example, is a manager is effectively disseminating the ethics message and building an ethical culture in his or her work group and are they rated on that in a performance appraisal, that should be part of their bonus system.” 

One valuable resource to assist the compliance practitioner in this task is entitled “Measuring Compliance Program Effectiveness: A Resource Guide, and was issued by the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) and the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (OIG) in March 2017. Although it was publicly released after the Justice Department Evaluation, it was drafted prior to that documents release and hence did not have the benefit of the DOJ’s thinking on measuring compliance program effectiveness.   

The document is an excellent resource on not only “what to measure” but equally important “how to measure” the seven elements of a compliance program as detailed in the US Sentencing Guidelines. While the focus is towards the health care industry, the concepts are broad enough for any industry or compliance practitioner to use to determine the effectiveness of their compliance program. Did I mention the cost - it is available at no charge on the OIG website. 

Once again, although focused on health care compliance, the Resource Guide is practical for the non-health care compliance professional. Further, it ties into many of the concepts articulated in the Evaluation. For example, in the Evaluation, Prong 2. Senior and Middle Management, the following questions appear under the heading Oversight – What compliance expertise has been available on the board of directors? Have the board of directors and/or external auditors held executive or private sessions with the compliance and control functions? What types of information have the board of directors and senior management examined in their exercise of oversight in the area in which the misconduct occurred?  

In the Evaluation under Prong 3. Autonomy and Resources, the following questions appear under the heading Funding and ResourcesHow have decisions been made about the allocation of personnel and resources for the compliance and relevant control functions in light of the company’s risk profile? Have there been times when requests for resources by the compliance and relevant control functions have been denied? If so, how have those decisions been made? 

These are a just couple of examples of how a compliance professional can begin to think through the questions laid out by the DOJ in its Evaluation. Moreover, by using the Resource Guide, you will be able to more fully determine the operationalization of your compliance program. The stated purpose is to give compliance professionals “as many ideas as possible, be broad enough to help any type of organization, and let the organization choose which ones best suit its needs.” Yet it is decidedly not a checklist but rather allows any Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) to assess the effectiveness (and operationalization) of their program. 

It also allows the tailoring and measurement of how you manage your company’s risks. As the Resource Guide states, “The frequency of use of any measurement should be based on the organization’s risk areas, size, resources, industry segment, etc. Each organization’s compliance program and effectiveness measurement process will be different.” 

DiCianni concluded by emphasizing the need for both a quantitative and qualitative approach to measuring compliance program effectiveness. Numbers are important but they only tell part of the equation. He stated, “Both are very important, but I think without having consideration of both sides of the equation, I do not will obtain a full understanding of how effective compliance program is in its operation.” 

Three Key Takeaways

  1. You should test your compliance program effectiveness through both a qualitative and quantitative approach.
  2. Bring in an outside party to interview your employees.
  3. The HCCA/OIG Guide is an excellent resource to consider compliance program effectiveness.

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 18, 2017

Jay and I return for a wide-ranging discussion on some of the week’s top compliance and ethics related stories, including:

  1. The SEC charges KPMG and partner with blown oil and gas company audit. See Dick Cassin’s blog post in the FCPA Blog.
  2. BSRG raises its head again as company chief Beny Steinmetz was detained in Israel. See article in the FCPA Blog.
  3. What should be the response of the compliance community to the events in Charlottesville and the administration’s response. Tom and Matt Kelly explored in this week’s edition of Compliance into the Weeds. See Matt Kelly’s blog post, Trump Tests Corporate America’s Values. See Tom’s blog post Time For Compliance to Take a Stand. Finally for a perspective from the compliance profession, see the statement from the Ethics and Compliance Initiative entitled, To the Members and Stakeholders of the ECI Community
  4. Jeff Kaplan considers whether lawyers can be whistleblowers. See Jeff’s article in the Conflict of Interest blog.
  5. Can you do any business in Iran? A new treasury ruling complicates the matter (think Catch 22). Sam Rubenfeld reports in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  6. Roy Snell reflects on 20 years in the compliance profession in an interview with Ben DiPietro in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  7. This month’s podcast series on One Month to a More Compliance Program is in full production. In August I am reviewing how to have greater continuous improvement in your compliance program. This week’s topics include voluntary monitoring, keeping track of current events, the Desktop Risk Assessment, using big data and controls testing. Affiliated Monitors is this month’s sponsor. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra.
Aug 17, 2017

I continue my discussion of continuous improvement using big data in a best practices compliance program, with some thoughts on how to use it going forward. In an eBook, entitled “Planning for Big Data - A CIO’s Handbook to the Changing Data Landscape, by the O’Reilly Radar Team, featured a chapter by Alistair Croll, entitled “The Feedback Economy which informs today’s discussion. 

Croll believes that big data will allow continuous improvement through the “feedback economy”. This is a step beyond the information economy because you are using the information that you have generated and collected as a source of information to guide you going forward. Information itself is not the greatest advantage but using that information to prevent, detect and remediate in a compliance program is going forward. 

Croll draws on military theory to illustrate his concept of a feedback loop. It is the OODA loop, which stands for observe, orient, decide and act. This comes from military strategist John Boyd who realized that combat “consisted of observing your circumstances, orienting yourself to your enemy’s way of thinking and your environment, deciding on a course of action and then acting on it.” Croll believes that the success of OODA is in large part “the fact it’s a loop” so that the results of “earlier actions feedback into later, hopefully wiser, ones.” This should allow combatants to “get inside their opponent’s loop, outsmarting and outmaneuvering them” because the system itself learns. For the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance practitioner this means that if your compliance program is able to collect and analyze information better, you can act on that information faster. 

Croll believes one of the greatest impediments to using this OODA feedback loop is the surplus of noise in our data; that “We need to capture and analyze it well, separating the digital wheat from the digital chaff, identifying meaningful undercurrents while ignoring meaningless flotsam. To do this we need to move to more robust system to put the data into a more usable format.” Croll moves through each of the steps in how a company collects, analyzes and acts on data.

The first step is data collection where the challenge is both the sheer amount of data coming in and its size. Once the data comes in it must be ingested and cleaned. If it comes into your organization in an unstructured format, you will need to cut it up and put into the correct database format for use. Croll touches on the storage component of where you place the data, whether in servers or on the cloud. 

A key insight from Croll is the issue of platforms, which are the frameworks used to crunch large amounts of data more quickly. His key insight is to break up the data “into chunks that can be analyzed in parallel” so the data can be considered and acted upon more quickly. Another technique he considers is “to build a pipeline of processing steps, each optimized for a particular task.” 

Another important component is machine learning and its importance in the data supply chain. Croll observes, “we’re trying to find signal within the noise, to discern patterns. Humans can’t find signals well by themselves. Just as astronomers use algorithms to scan the night’s sky for signals, then verify any promising anomalies themselves, so too can data analysts use machine learning to find interesting dimensions, groupings or patterns within the data. Machines can work at a lower signal-to-noise ratio than people.” 

Yet Croll correctly notes that as important as machine learning is in big data collection and analysis, there is “no substitute for human eyes and ears.” Yet for many CCOs or compliance practitioners, displaying the data is most difficult because it is not generally in a readable form. To say lawyers are not as proficient as other corporate types in excel or similar tools would be to state the obvious, yet that is about as sophisticated as many practitioners can get. It is important to portray the data in more visual style to help convey the “dozens of independent data sources” into navigable 3D environments. 

Of course having all this data is of zero use unless you act on it. Big data can be used in a wide variety of decision making, from employment decisions around hiring and firing decision, to strategic planning, to risk management and compliance programs. But it does take a shift in compliance thinking to use such data. Once again lawyers are particularly ill suited to consider such information for reasons as diverse as training and temperament. This is yet another reason why compliance has evolved to Compliance 2.0, Compliance 3.0 and beyond. Big data allows you to make a quicker assessment of the impact of measured risks. It advocates “fast, iterative learning.” 

Croll ends his chapter by noting that the “big data supply chain is the organizational OODA loop.” But unlike the OODA loop, it is more than simply about the loop and plugging information as you move through it. He believes “big data is mostly about feedback”; that is, obtaining the impact of the risks you have accepted. For this to work in compliance, a company’s compliance discipline needs to both understand and “choose a course of action based upon the results, then observe what happens and use that information to collect new data or analyze things in a different way. It’s a process of continuous optimization”. 

The three prongs of any best practices compliance program are prevent, detect and remedy. Whether you consider the OODA loop or the big data supply chain feedback, this process, coupled with the data that is available to you should facilitate a more agile and directed compliance program. The feedback components in both processes allow you to make adjustments literally on the fly. If that does not meet the definition of continuous improvement, I do not know what does.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Use big data to continuously improve your compliance program.
  2. The OODA Loop is an excellent way to think about using data to continuously improvement.
  3. Always remember the human (IE., CCO) element.

 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 17, 2017

In this episode, I explore why Wells Fargo needs a true compliance expert on its Board of Directors. The Wells Fargo Board needs someone with compliance expertise to oversee of the role of the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and the bank’s compliance function which clearly was not up to the task of preventing illegal or even unethical conduct. With Board oversight of compliance, the senior executives provide the Board with a certain level of information and reporting which is an outcome of how senior management and the C-Suite has defined the compliance risk appetite.

My plea to the company is to hire someone with direct compliance experience for this final seat on the Board of Directors. While some Directors has experience in the regulatory world is very different from experience in the compliance realm which focuses on the mission, vision and values of a corporation through the tripartite process of prevent, detect and remediate. In addition to getting its regulatory house in order, Wells Fargo has one very large culture problem which needs compliance expertise. Even for a former Bank president, the issue of compliance is at the absolute forefront of Wells Fargo’s miasma.

Wells Fargo needs a true compliance expert on its Board of Directors.

Aug 16, 2017

In 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced resolution of a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement action involving the Hitachi Ltd (Hitachi). There were several interesting aspects to this enforcement action and plenty of lessons to be learned by the compliance practitioner going forward. This enforcement action also presented one of the clearest cases for keeping track of current events for continuous improvement I have seen. 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Hitachi matter is that it involved bribery of a political party, the African National Congress (ANC). This portion of the enforcement action stands as a stark reminder that political parties are covered by the FCPA just the same as government officials. The FCPA Guidance states: “The FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions apply to corrupt payments made to (1) “any foreign official”; (2) “any foreign political party or official thereof ”; (3) “any candidate for foreign political office”; or (4) any person, while knowing that all or a portion of the payment will be offered, given, or promised to an individual falling within one of these three categories.” Although the statute distinguishes between a “foreign official,” “foreign political party or official thereof,” and “candidate for foreign political office,” the term “foreign official” in this guide generally refers to an individual falling within any of these three categories. 

The bribery schemes themselves were notable only for their blantantness. Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said in the SEC Press Release “Hitachi’s lax internal control environment enabled its subsidiary to pay millions of dollars to a politically-connected front company for the ANC to win contracts with the South African government. Hitachi then unlawfully mischaracterized those payments in its books and records as consulting fees and other legitimate payments.” Moreover, according to the Complaint: 

  • Hitachi was aware that Chancellor House Holdings (Pty) Ltd. was a funding vehicle for the ANC during the bidding process. 
  • Hitachi nevertheless continued to partner with Chancellor and encourage the company to use its political influence to help obtain government contracts from Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., a public utility owned and operated by the South African government.
  • Hitachi paid “success fees” to Chancellor for its exertion of influence during the Eskom tender process pursuant to a separate, unsigned side-arrangement.  

The enforcement action does point up the oft-times difficulty in providing corporate social responsibility and distinguishing it from outright corruption in certain countries. As noted in an article in the Wall Street Journal businesses “operating in South Africa are encouraged to take on black business partners under the ANC’s policy of black economic empowerment (BEE), intended to redress economic imbalances created by apartheid.” Yet, critics claim that there is a “blurred line between business and politics in the awarding of state tenders” in South Africa. However, the ANC front group was charged “only approximately $190, 819 stake which returned to it over $5MM in “dividends” and another $1MM in a “success fee” for contracts to Hitachi worth “about $5.6bn.” 

This case demonstrates the need for a CCO to keep track of current events. It does not mean you must read the biggest newspapers on a daily basis, although that certainly would help. You must rely on your business folks on the ground to keep track in the changes of personnel of joint ventures or other local partnerships. Moreover, there are several automated due diligence services which literally provide daily updates on a wide variety of persons and individuals who might change positions in a government or move from the public sector to the private sector or back.

In many under-developed countries, there is a relatively small group of well-educated technocrats who move back and forth from the government to the private sector and back. They are also often involved in political parties. So today’s private might be tomorrow’s Politically Exposed Person (PEP) or indeed may have been yesterday’s PEP. This requires you to navigate carefully as these are most usually jurisdictions which are high-risk for corruption. 

For the compliance practitioner, the Hitachi SEC enforcement action provides a valuable reminder that the FCPA covers more than foreign government officials and officials of state owned enterprises. Political parties are also covered so that if part of your corporate social responsibility includes payments to political party front groups, your company could get into FCPA hot water. Yet it also means you will need to keep abreast of just who your counter-parties during the entire course of your commercial relationship. This means keeping up with current events is a must and can facilitate continuous improvement.  

Three Key Takeaways

  1. The Hitachi FCPA enforcement action demonstrates the need to keep track of current events for continuous improvement.
  2. Many product and services providers in the compliance space provide ongoing monitoring for PEPs and SDNs.
  3. Make sure your partners are still who they say they are! 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 16, 2017

In this very topical episode Matt Kelly and I take a deep dive into the administration’s response to the events over the weekend in Charlottesville and what it means for business leaders, compliance practitioners and others going forward. With the resignation of Ken Fraizer, CEO of Merck and others from the administration’s voluntary business counsel, due to the administration’s embrace of the alt-right and white supremacy, many CEO’s are asking the question “Where’s the upside” to publicly embracing the administration. From the compliance perspective, we explore the question in the context of a corporation’s ethical values, it business mission and statement for its employees and customers. Finally, we consider the documented ‘Trump Risk’ and how it is negatively impacting US businesses across the globe.

For more see Matt’ Blog post, Trump Tests Corporate America’s Commitment to Values on RadicalCompliance.com

Aug 15, 2017

Another mechanism to facilitate continuous improve comes from ideas around risk assessments. Both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) make clear the need for a risk assessment to inform your compliance program. I believe that most, if not all CCOs and compliance practitioners understand this well-articulated need. The FCPA Guidance could not have been clearer when it stated, “Assessment of risk is fundamental to developing a strong compliance program, and is another factor DOJ and SEC evaluate when assessing a company’s compliance program.” While many compliance practitioners have difficulty getting their collective arms about what is required for a risk assessment and then how precisely to use it; the FCPA Guidance makes clear there is no ‘one size fits all’ for about anything in an effective compliance program. 

One type of risk assessment can consist of a full-blown, worldwide exercise, where teams of lawyers and fiscal consultants travel around the globe, interviewing and auditing. Of course, this can be a notoriously expense exercise. However, if there is one thing that I learned as a lawyer, which also applies to the compliance field, it is that you are only limited by your imagination. So using the FCPA Guidance’s no ‘one size fits all’ proscription, I would submit that is also true for risk assessments. You might try assessing other areas annually, through a more limited focused risk assessment, literally while staying at your desk and not traveling away from your corporate headquarters. 

The idea comes from Jan Farley, the Chief Compliance Officer at Dresser-Rand and he calls it the ‘Desktop Risk Assessment’. I think it is an excellent tool for continuous improvement. Moreover, it is a tool you can employ at little to no cost by you or your compliance team and on an ongoing basis. It is something you can use as often as quarterly, semi-annually or annually. Some of the areas that such a Desktop Risk Assessment could inquire into might be the following: 

  • Are resources adequate to sustain a culture of compliance?
  • How are the risks in the C-Suite and the Boardroom being addressed?
  • What are the FCPA risks related to the supply chain?
  • How is risk being examined and due diligence performed at the vendor/agent level? How is such risk being managed?
  • Is the documentation adequate to support the program for regulatory purposes?
  • Is culture, attitude (tone from the top), and knowledge measured? If yes, can we use the information enhance the program?
  • Disciplinary guidelines – Do they exist and has anyone been terminated or disciplined for a violating policy?
  • Communication of information and findings - Are escalation protocols appropriate?
  • What are the opportunities to improve compliance? 

There are a variety of materials that you can review from or at a company that can facilitate such a Desktop Risk Assessment. You can review your company’s policies and written guidelines by reviewing anti-corruption compliance policies, guidelines, and procedures to ensure that compliance programs are tailored to address specific risks such as gifts, hospitality and entertainment, travel, political and charitable donations, and promotional activities. 

This list is not intended to be a complete list of items, you can pick and choose to form some type of Desktop Risk Assessment but hopefully you can see some of the areas you can assess. My suggestion is that you try identifying and focusing on core compliance components in your organization. Obviously there are probably a million things you could fix. However, you cannot fix everything, so you must make a decision about your primacies, and then act on them. A Desktop Risk Assessment may well help you to do so. 

If you perform an annual Desktop Risk Assessment with a full worldwide risk assessment every two years or so, you should be in a good position to keep abreast of compliance issues that may change and need more or greater risk management. Do not forget that the FCPA Guidance ends its section on risk with the following, “When assessing a company’s compliance program, DOJ and SEC take into account whether and to what degree a company analyzes and addresses the particular risks it faces.” By using the Desktop Risk Assessment, you can answer any regulator who asks what have you done to manage the risks in your company, by using the resources and tools that were available to you. 

Three Key Takeaways 

  1. As a compliance professional you are only limited by your imagination.
  2. Use the Desktop Risk Assessment to supplement the full Risk Assessment, performed biennially.
  3. You must remediate as appropriate.

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 15, 2017

If you have not seen it, I would suggest you go to see what I believe is the summer’s top movie, Dunkirk. It is great cinema, good history and presents the view of soldier on the ground from the English perspective. It unfolds on land, sea and air; in decreasing time frames of one week, one day and one hour. I was lucky enough to see it in glorious 70MM wide screen so the resolution was outstanding. There are several leadership lessons which I believe can be learned from the British (and German) experiences at Dunkirk.

Aug 14, 2017

Continuous improvement requires that you not only audit and monitor but also that you test your controls. In addition to the language set out in the 2012 FCPA Guidance, two of the seven compliance elements in the US Sentencing Guidelines call for companies to monitor, audit, and respond quickly to allegations of misconduct. Finally, under Prong 9 of the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs, under the area of Control Testing, it asks the following question: What control testing has the company generally undertaken? Controls testing is key component enforcement officials look for when determining whether companies maintain adequate oversight of their compliance programs. 

A review plan is an excellent tool for the compliance practitioner because it provides a method for the ongoing evaluation of policies and sets forth a manner to communicate and train on any changes that are implemented. More than simply staying current, this approach will help provide the dynamics that the DOJ continually talks about in keeping your program fresh. Lastly, such a review plan can also guide the compliance practitioner in creating an ongoing game plan for continuous improvement. 

As the COSO 2013 Internal Controls Framework provides a roadmap to test your controls. This means that if you have a multi-country or business unit organization, you need to determine how your compliance internal controls are inter-related up and down the organization. The Illustrative Guide also realizes that smaller companies may have less formal structures in place throughout the organization. Your auditing can and should reflect this business reality. Finally, if your company relies heavily on technology for your compliance function, you can leverage that technology to “support the ongoing testing and evaluation” program going forward. 

First are some general definitions that you need to consider in your evaluation. A compliance internal control must be both present and functioning. A control is present if the “components and relevant principles exist in the design and implementation of the system of [compliance] internal control to achieve the specified objective.”  A compliance internal control is functioning if the “components and relevant principles continue to exist in the conduct of the system of [compliance] internal controls to achieve specified objectives.” 

COSO suggests a four-pronged approach in your testing, which I have adapted for the compliance practitioner. (1) Make an overall test of your company’s controls. This should include an analysis of whether each control is present and functioning and they are operating together in an integrated manner. (2) There should be a control component evaluation to determine if any control deficiency is found you can move to see if there are any compensating controls. (3) Test whether each control furthers the legal or business requirement you are trying to meet and then determine if a deficiency exists, what is the severity of the deficiency. (4) Finally, you should summarize all your internal control deficiencies in a log so they are addressed on a structured basis for continued improvement. 

Another way to think through testing could be to consider the controls to affect the principle and would allow internal control deficiencies to be noted along with an initial review of the control failure. The next step would be to roll up the results of the evaluations. Next would be a re-evaluation of the severity of any deficiency in the context of compensating controls. Lastly, an overall testing allows you to consider if the controls are operating together in an integrated manner. This type of process would then lend itself to an ongoing evaluation so that if business models, laws, regulations or other situations changed, you could test if your internal controls were up to the new situations or needed adjustment. 

Under a compliance regime, you may be faced with known or relevant criteria to classify any deficiency. For example, if written policies do not have at a minimum the categories of policies laid out in the FCPA 2012 Guidance, this could be deemed a control failure (The Guidance states the following policies should exist: on “the nature and extent of transactions with foreign governments, including payments to foreign officials; use of third parties; gifts, travel, and entertainment expenses; charitable and political donations; and facilitating and expediting payments”). 

If there are no objective criteria, as laid out in the FCPA 2012 Guidance, to evaluate your company’s compliance internal controls, what steps should you take? COSO suggests that a business’ senior management, with appropriate board oversight, “may establish objective criteria for evaluating internal control deficiencies and for how deficiencies should be reported to those responsible for achieving those objectives.” Together with appropriate auditing boundaries set by either established law, regulation or standard, or through management exercising its judgment, you can then make a full determination of “whether each of the components and relevant principles is present and functioning and components are operating together, and ultimately in concluding on the effectiveness of the entity’s system of internal control.” The key is to document the reasoning of the boundaries and then follow them. 

This Document, Document, and Document feature is critical in any best practices anti-corruption or anti-bribery compliance program whether based upon the FCPA, UK Bribery Act or some other regulation. When the SEC comes knocking this is precisely the type of evidence they will be looking for to evaluate if your company has met its obligations under the both SOX 404 requirements and the FCPA’s internal controls provisions. Finally, it provides a way to continuously improve your controls.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Testing of controls helps to provide reasonable assurance of achievement of the entity’s controls.
  2. There are two over-arching requirements for effective controls. First, each of the five components are present and function. Second, are the five components operating together in an integrated approach.
  3. For an anti-corruption compliance program, you can use the Tem Hallmarks of an Effective Compliance Program as your guide to test against. 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 14, 2017

In this episode Mike Volkov and I discuss the two official pronouncements from the Sessions’ Justice Department regarding FCPA enforcement. They were both declinations used under the FCPA Pilot Program, which was announced in April 2016. The first declination involved Linde Gas North America LLC and Linde North America Inc. Linde Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Linde Group, a German based entity which is listed on multiple stock exchanges in Germany, but not listed in the US.  The second declination involved CDM Smith Inc. a privately held company, headquartered in Boston MA. As neither company is a US publicly listed entity, neither is subject to jurisdiction of the SEC. Hence both declinations were granted with the notation of declinations with disgorgement. In Linde Gas, the disgorgement amount was $7.8 million and forfeit $3.4 million, for a total of $11.2 million and in the CDM Smith declination the disgorgement amount was $4.037 million. Both declinations were superior results obtained by the companies as both had clearly violated the FCPA, for multiple years in ongoing bribery and corruption schemes.

For more on these two enforcement actions see the following:

  1. Linde in the Republic of Georgia: A Declination and Lessons Learned by Tom Fox;
  2. A Second Superior Result - CDM Smith Obtains a Declination by Tom Fox; and
  3. Justice Department Resolves Two Cases Under FCPA Pilot Program by Mike Volkov.
Aug 11, 2017

Jay and I return for a wide-ranging discussion on some of the week’s top compliance and ethics related stories, including: 

  1. The Mattis Memo on ethics. See Tom’s blog post on why this Memo is so significant for the compliance practitioner. Also check out Matt Kelly’s blog post on Radical Compliance
  2. More Data Security Compliance on EU Horizon. See article Mara Lemos Stein’s article in Risk and Compliance Journal in the WSJ.
  3. One of the great musicians of the 20th century died this week, Glen Campbell. Tom pays tribute in a moving blog post.
  4. Matt Kelly explores the intersection of FCPA and non-GAAP financial reporting. See Matt’s article in Radical Compliance.
  5. Jay asks if FCPA defenses counsel are becoming to whiny, based upon an article in GIR (sub req’d) by Jenner & Block lawyers, David Bitkower and Nicholas Barnaby and associate Marguerite Moeller entitled, “DOJ must beware unintended consequences, as multilateral settlements rise
  6. Everything Compliance, Episode 16 is out. It is our first book review episode. We consider Jesse Eisinger’s book the Chickenshit Club. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra. Eisinger and key book source Paul Pelletier have agreed to come on the FCPA Compliance Report to discuss the book next month.
  7. This month’s podcast series on One Month to a More Compliance Program has premiered. In August I review how to have greater continuous improvement in your compliance program. Affiliated Monitors is this month’s sponsor. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra.
  8. Tom surpasses 2000 blog posts. See his blog post on surpassing 2000 blogs posts here.
  9. Jay discusses his Weekend Report, And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here?
Aug 11, 2017

Today I consider a fraud audit by using data analytics to help detect or prevent bribery and corruption where the primary sales force used by a company are its FCPA and Chinese domestic law, involved China based employees defrauding their company by using false expense reports to create a pot of money to use as a slush fund to pay bribes. Here you can think back to the Eli Lilly FCPA enforcement action from 2012 up to the 2014 GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) problems as examples of where employees used their expense accounts not for personal use but for greater corporate malfeasance.

Joe Oringel, co-Founder and co-Principal of Visual Risk IQ, related case studies where his organization used data analysis to review employee expense reports and how that experience can be used to formulate the same type of fraud analysis for a CCO or compliance practitioner. Also of this can be used as ongoing monitoring to facilitate continuous improvement of your compliance program.  

One common technique fraudsters use is to split larger purchases across multiple smaller transactions, so their organization has designed their data analytics queries to detect such split transactions. An example might be where procurement cards (P-cards) are used for certain low dollar-value expenses. If a company has a procurement card limit for employees in their organization, which is $3,000 for a single transaction and $10,000 in aggregate spend for a single month; it would want to identify any use of P-cards for larger dollar transactions used for inappropriate or illegal purchases.

Contrast this with the problem of split payments. This is the situation where a single invoice is divided and the full amount of the payment is made in two or more simultaneous transactions, all done by different types of internal corporate payments. The key is to understand where the invoices are coming from and if only one vendor or supplier, investigate who is splitting the payments and why.       

Another area to focus on using data analytics is gift, travel and entertainment (GTE), to identify out-of-policy expense reports and out-of-compliance expenses. Here the biggest issue is “double dipping”. This means an expense is recorded once on a T&E report and then a second time on another expense report or a P-card charge or other type of expense. These are examples that can be uncovered with data with analytics and from there you can move to determine if they might be an intentional, as opposed to an unintentional, mistake.

In the case of double dipping, a key is to look for the same airfare or hotel or meals, perhaps being reported on multiple employees’ T&E expense reports. An example might be where an employee takes another employee out for a business meal; they pay for the meal on one expense report. Then separately a coworker records the meal, same day, same city, and claims that employee as one of their attendees. We find these sorts of situations with our analytics, and these are clear examples of suspicious transactions that ought to be discussed with both employees”

Other examples of double dipping include duplicate transactions between meals and per diem allowances, or mileage and company vehicles or rental cars. These are all things that can be identified with data analytics that are very difficult for an individual approver to see on a single expense report. The reason is that when you are tasked with approving an employee’s expense report, the reviewer most often has single report in front of themselves for review. This makes it difficult to recall who would have submitted a report one or two months ago, and it’s very possible that somebody submitted an airplane ticket when the ticket was purchased, and then six weeks later when they took the trip, that air expense could be reported a second time.  

This same issue could arise with P-card purchases if you have an approver considering a single $2,500 purchase who approves that purchase on Monday and then again on Friday. Yet had those two transactions been on the same day, more than the employee’s spending limit, the approver might not have approved both, but because they were submitted on different dates, it may well appear to the approver they were two separate transactions. With data analytics, you can aggregate those multiple trip or P-card reports into a single report, to help a reviewer or an approver determine whether the transactions meet employees’ policies, both individually and in the aggregate.

This double dipping technique led to two anti-bribery compliance enforcement actions. One in the US involving Eli Lily and a second in China involving the US pharmaceutical entity GSK. So the risk is real and by using ongoing data monitoring you might not only get ahead of the legal violation but you would have a much more efficient business process going forward.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. The typical fraud audit will get down into the weeds with data analytics.
  2. Split dollar expenses are key metric.
  3. Double-dipping can lead to larger problems.

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 10, 2017

What is organizational culture? Eric Feldman, SVP at Affiliated Monitors has said it comprises the mission, vision and values of an organization. A similar way to consider it might be as a company’s values, visions, norms and beliefs. Whichever way you define it or look at it, corporate culture affects how groups within a company interact with each other. A key inquiry is whether the corporate incentive structure supports the articulated beliefs of a company. How does one measure or audit these articulations?

Jose Tabuena in an article entitled, “Can You Audit Corporate Culture” said that  “an important feature of a good culture is that the majority of employees can be positively influenced by values and environments that reinforce strong company values. Such a climate arises when the workforce believes that certain forms of ethical reasoning and behavior are expected norms for decision making. The ethical climate of an organization serves many useful functions in organizations. It helps employees identify ethical issues and address those issues by giving answers to “What should I do?” when faced with an ethical dilemma.” The oft-used corporate tactic to blame the ubiquitous ‘rogue employee’ is an “attempt to deny the flaws in the system and the culture that spawned the bad acts in the first place.”

Some of the techniques for measurement include employee interviews, focus groups and employee surveys to measure corporate culture. This is because through “identifying cultural strengths and areas needing improvement, a cultural assessment can guide the creation of communications plans and culture-building initiatives that are tailored to the company's needs. In many cases, an effective strategy may be to target weak spots while simultaneously anchoring the overall message to positive values already strongly shared across the organization.” It is important to understand that corporate culture will not be uniform across geographies, functional areas or operating systems. But this can be useful in comparing the results.

Feldman noted some of the key areas of concern in a culture audit are the following

Operation Stresses. These can greatly influence a company's culture, making it periodically necessary to determine whether the company is on track. If your CEO says that your only goal is the make your numbers, that is an operation stress to hit the target goal and the implicit message is that you must do so by any means possible. Internal audits and other forms of evaluation and measurement allow for course correction and reinforcement as needed.

Retaliation. There is nothing more toxic in the workplace than the fear of raising your hand to report an issue and facing retaliation. It is also a harbinger of other negative cultural factors such as specific or even general distrust of management. Here you should consider whether employees are willing to address matters with their immediate supervisor or to use the compliance hotline and what would happen if they reported misconduct can be meaningful. An even better approach would be to measure a company on how issues are reported and ultimately addressed. A final test is the work place promotion and incentive history of internal whistleblowers going forward in the employment tenure with the organization.

Compensation and Incentives. Basically, does the compensation scheme and promotion to management consider compliance as a key indicia as employee promotion, compensation and incentive programs can convey positive cultural messages. Consider that Wal-Mart, after it began its years-long FCPA investigation in 2012, began basing a portion of compensation for top executives on the company's ability to meet compliance goals. If executives do not meet their compliance objectives, they risk having their annual bonuses reduced. Therefore, one measure to incentivizing compliance is the degree to which ethical business practices have been factored into executive-level performance evaluations and/or compensation criteria. This can be leveraged down into the organization as well.

Senior Management Tone. You should question employee turnover and retention such for information. Through employee interviews, he believes that one can ascertain whether the turnover rate is attributed to organizational transition or stress stemming from management's philosophy and operating style, which might include such things as inappropriate compensation packages, unreasonable sales goals, requirements, etc.

HR Employee Lifecycle. It is important that a company actively recruit new hires based on its mission, vision and values of an organization and reinforce these when people join the company. All of this can be done through a rigorous hiring process, which incorporates a company’s ethical values into the process. But it does not stop at the hiring and onboarding process. It should occur during every Human Resources touchpoint in the employee lifecycle, during reviews and evaluations, consideration for promotion and even at departure. You will need to review the records of employees who have had poor compliance evaluations in the past years and determine whether those employees had appropriate qualifications relative to their job descriptions. The review should be performed with an eye toward ascertaining whether the company's hiring and promotion practices appropriately noted compliance qualifications, skill set, and delegated authority to their formal position and job description.

Companies must have a high-performance corporate culture for doing business ethically. One of the ways to do so is through the culture audit. It can also be a powerful tool for continuous improvement going forward. Find out what your employees are saying about your corporate mission, vision and values and most importantly remediate if those mission, vision and values are found wanting.  

Three Key Takeaways

  1. What are the mission, vision and values of a company?
  2. What are the compensation incentives in the culture?
  3. Always be closing? 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 10, 2017

In this episode, the Everything Compliance trio of Matt Kelly, Jay Rosen and Tom Fox unpack our first book review. We consider the recently released The Chickenshit Club by Jesse Eisenger and it may mean for the compliance practitioner. We consider the internal journey of the Department of Justice from their days of Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia convictions to the 2008 financial crisis where no senior executives were prosecuted. It was a series of steps which led to this change and we discuss the key changes in the DoJ's thinking. The book is a real page turner and our discussion reflects this. We believe that every compliance practitioner should read the book and understand its lessons from DOJ prosecution.

Every compliance practitioner should read Eisinger's book The Chickenshit Club.

You can purchase a copy of the book The Chickenshit Club by clicking here.

Aug 9, 2017

In my last corporate position, my company was at the cutting edge because we required compliance related audits for vendors in the supply chain. This was cutting edge in 2007-08. However, now an audit for adherence to compliance requirements has become a standard best practice in the management of business relationships with third party vendors which work with a company through the supply chain. In several settlements of enforcement actions through both Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPA) and Non-Prosecution Agreements (NPA), in the 2012 FCPA Guidance, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and most recently in the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs; made it clear that a best practices FCPA compliance program includes the right to conduct audits of the books and records of its suppliers to ensure compliance. Many companies have yet to begin their audit process for FCPA compliance on vendors in their supply chain. I find this to be a missed opportunity from both the compliance perspective and greater business efficiency. 

Initially it should be noted that a company must obtain the right to audit for compliance in its contract with any third-party vendor in the supply chain. Such an audit right should be a part of a company’s standard terms and conditions. A sample clause could include language such as the following: 

The vendor shall permit, upon the request of and at sole discretion of the Company, audits by independent auditors acceptable to Company, and agree that such auditors shall have full and unrestricted access to, and to conduct reviews of, all records related to the work performed for, or services or equipment provided to, Company, and to report any violation of any of the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, UK Bribery Act or any other applicable laws and regulations, with respect to:

  1. the effectiveness of existing compliance programs and codes of conduct;
  2. the origin and legitimacy of any funds paid to Company;
  3. its books, records and accounts, or those of any of its subsidiaries, joint ventures or affiliates, related to work performed for, or services or equipment provided to, Company;
  4. all disbursements made for or on behalf of Company; and
  5. all funds received from Company in connection with work performed for, or services or equipment provided to, Company. 

In Industrial Engineer Magazine, in an article entitled, “Dynamic Changes” authors Tariq Aldowaisan and Elaf Ashkanani discussed the audit program utilized by the Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) for its supply chain vendors. Although the focus of these audits is not to review FCPA compliance, the referenced audits are designed to detect and report incidents of non-compliance, which would also be the goal of a FCPA compliance audit. Utilizing ISO 19011 as the basis to set the parameters of an audit, the authors define an audit as a “systematic, independent and documented process for obtaining audit evidence and evaluating it objectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria are fulfilled.” The authors list three factors, which they believe contribute to a successful audit: (1) an effective audit program which specifies all necessary activities for the audit; (2) having competent auditors in place; and (3) an organization that is committed to being audited. More simply, the action steps for the process can be described as one to (1) capture the data; (2) analyze the data; and (3) report on the data. 

There is no one specific list of transactions or other items which should be audited, however some of the audit best practices would suggest the following: 

  • Review of contracts with supply chain vendors to confirm that the appropriate compliance terms and conditions are in place.
  • Determine that actual due diligence took place on the third-party vendor.
  • Review compliance training program; both the substance of the program and attendance records.
  • Does the third-party vendor have a hotline or any other reporting mechanism for allegations of compliance violations? If so how are such reports maintained. Review any reports of compliance violations or issues that arose through anonymous, hotline or any other reporting mechanism.
  • Does the third-party vendor have written employee discipline procedures? If so have any employees been disciplined for any compliance violations? If yes review all relevant files relating to any such violations to determine the process used and the outcome reached.
  • Review expense reports for employees in high risk positions or high risk countries.
  • Testing for gifts, travel and entertainment which were provided to, or for, foreign governmental officials.
  • Review the overall structure of the third-party vendor’s compliance program. If the company has a designated compliance officer to whom, and how, does that compliance officer report? How is the third-party vendor’s compliance program designed to identify risks and what has been the result of any so identified.
  • Review a sample of employee commission payments and determine if they follow the internal policy and procedure of the third-party vendor.
  • Regarding any petty cash activity in foreign locations, review a sample of activity and apply analytical procedures and testing. Analyze the general ledger for high-risk transactions and cash advances and apply analytical procedures and testing.

This list is not exhaustive. For instance, there could be an audit focus on internal controls or segregation of duties. Any organization which audits a business partner in its supply chain should consult with legal, audit, financial and supply chain professionals to determine the full scope of the audit and a thorough and complete work plan should be created based upon all these professional inputs. After an audit, an audit report should be issued. This audit report should detail incidents of non-compliance with the compliance program and recommendations for improvements. Any reported incidents of non-compliance should reference the basis of any incidents of non-compliance such as contractual clauses, legal requirement or company policies.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Is your supply chain vendor committed to the audit process?
  2. Capture the data, analyze the data, report on the data.
  3. Supply Chain audits are no longer cutting edge but are now simply best practices.

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 9, 2017

In today’s episode we consider an eBook, entitled “Planning for Big Data - A CIO’s Handbook to the Changing Data Landscape, by the O’Reilly Radar Team, featured a chapter by Alistair Croll, entitled “The Feedback Economy which informs today’s discussion. Croll believes that big data will allow continuous improvement through the “feedback economy”. This is a step beyond the information economy because you are using the information that you have generated and collected as a source of information to guide you going forward. Information itself is not the greatest advantage but using that information to make your business more agile, efficient and profitable is. 

Croll draws on military theory to illustrate his concept of a feedback loop. It is the OODA loop, which stands for observe, orient, decide and act. This comes from military strategist John Boyd who realized that combat “consisted of observing your circumstances, orienting yourself to your enemy’s way of thinking and your environment, deciding on a course of action and then acting on it.” Croll believes that the success of OODA is in large part “the fact it’s a loop” so that the results of “earlier actions feedback into later, hopefully wiser, ones.” This should allow combatants to “get inside their opponent’s loop, outsmarting and outmaneuvering them” because the system itself learns. For the business leader this means that if your company is able to collect and analyze information better and you can act on that information faster. 

Croll believes one of the greatest impediments to using this OODA feedback loop is the surplus of noise in our data; that “We need to capture and analyze it well, separating the digital wheat from the digital chaff, identifying meaningful undercurrents while ignoring meaningless flotsam. To do this we need to move to more robust system to put the data into a more usable format.” Croll moves through each of the steps in how a company collects, analyzes and acts on data.

 

The first step is data collection where the challenge is both the sheer amount of data coming in and its size. Once the data comes in it must be ingested and cleaned. If it comes into your organization in an unstructured format, you will need to cut it up and put into the correct database format for use. Croll touches on the storage component of where you place the data, whether in servers or on the cloud. 

A key insight from Croll is the issue of platforms, which are the frameworks used to crunch large amounts of data more quickly. His key insight is to break up the data “into chunks that can be analyzed in parallel” so the data can be considered and acted upon more quickly. Another technique he considers is “to build a pipeline of processing steps, each optimized for a particular task.” 

Another important component is machine learning and its importance in the data supply chain. Croll observes, “we’re trying to find signal within the noise, to discern patterns. Humans can’t find signal well by themselves. Just as astronomers use algorithms to scan the night’s sky for signals, then verify any promising anomalies themselves, so too can data analysts use machines to find interesting dimensions, groupings or patterns within the data. Machines can work at a lower signal-to-noise ratio than people.” 

Yet Croll correctly notes that as important as machine learning is in big data collection and analysis, there is “no substitute for human eyes and ears.” Yet for many business leaders, displaying the data is most difficult because it is not generally in a readable form. It is important to portray the data in more visual style to help convey the “dozens of independent data sources” into navigable 3D environments. 

Of course having all this data is of zero use unless you act on it. Big data can be used in a wide variety of decision making, from employment decisions around hiring and firing decision, to strategic planning, to risk management and compliance programs. But it does take a shift in compliance thinking to use such data. It advocates “fast, iterative learning.” Big data allows you to make a quicker assessment of the impact of measured risks. 

Croll ends his chapter by noting that the “big data supply chain is the organizational OODA loop.” But unlike the OODA loop, it is more than simply about the loop and plugging information as you move through it. He believes “big data is mostly about feedback”; that is, obtaining the impact of the risks you have accepted. For this to work in compliance, a company’s compliance discipline needs to both understand and “choose a course of action based upon the results, then observe what happens and use that information to collect new data or analyze things in a different way. It’s a process of continuous optimization”. 

Whether you consider the OODA loop or the big data supply chain feedback, this process, coupled with the data that is available to you should facilitate a more agile and directed business. The feedback components in both processes allow you to make adjustments literally on the fly. If that does not meet the definition of continuous improvement, I do not know what does.

Aug 9, 2017

In this episode, Matt Kelly and I take a deep dive into the weeds on a Memo issued by Secretary of Defense James Mattis last week. It deals specifically with ethical conduct within the DOD and US military. It is one of the most power statements we have seen on ethics, the commitment to ethics, ethics training and the modeling of ethical behavior. It is short, only 250 words or so. We unpack the entire Memo and then engage in political speculation as to why it was released and what that may portend. Matt wrote about it earlier this week on his sight, Radical Compliance. It is so significant, I will post about it later this week. Every CCO and compliance practitioner should read Matt’s piece and the Memo.

See Matt Kelly’s blog post Secretary Mattis’ Insights on Ethics

For a copy of the Mattis Memo, click here.

Aug 8, 2017

Next I consider at how data analytics can be used for continuous improvement where the primary sales force used by a company is third parties. A clear majority of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations and related enforcement actions have come from the use of third parties. While sham contracting (i.e. using a third party to conduit the payment of a bribe) has lessened in recent years, there are related data analysis that can be performed to ascertain whether a third party is likely performing legitimate services for your company.  There are several more analytics that can be run in combination to identify suspicious third parties and some of the simplest can be to look for duplicate or erroneous payments, all of which can lead to continuous improvement.

A key to moving from detection to prevention to continuous improvement is the frequency of review. It is common for organizations to periodically review a year or more of accounts payable invoices at one time for errors or overpayments. Changing this from a one-time annual or biennial event to something that is done daily or weekly dramatically improves the value of such controls. This more frequent, preventative analysis is integral to a foundation of third party management. While many company perform periodic look-back audits, ongoing monitoring also works to accomplish the same queries on a daily or weekly basis. This allows organizations to find duplicate payments or overpayments after the invoice has been approved but prior to its disbursement. So instead of detecting a payment error three or six months after it is made, you prevent the money from leaving the company altogether.

                        Duplicate invoices are a favorite mechanism of fraudsters. Consider the following scenario, Invoice No. ABC-13, was paid for $10,597.95. Thirty days later the same vendor re-submitted the same invoice due to non-payment, but it was recorded by the payor organization without the hyphen between ABC and 13, consequently it was not detected by the system of payable controls. The problem is the second invoice had slightly different writing on the face of it, but it was for the same services and hence was a duplicate invoice. On the company side, both invoices were scanned into the company’s imaging system and queued for payment. Data analysis can locate such overpayments and identify a second payment should not be made because it is a match of one that had been previously approved.

Another analysis, which a compliance practitioner could compare using vendor name and other identifying information, for example address, country, data from a watch list such as Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) or Specially Designated National (SDN), to names and other identifying information on your vendor file. An inquiry could also be used to test in other ways such as if a vendor has the same surname as a vendor on the specially designated national terrorist list, or a politically exposed person.

Now suppose they share the same name as an elected official down in Brazil. How do we make sure that our vendor or broker is a different John Doe than the John Doe that is a politically exposed person in that country? It is only upon closer inspection where you can determine that the middle names are different and the ages are different, one of has an address is Brasilia and the other is in Sao Paulo. Without further inspection including other demographic information about your vendors, consultants or third parties and the comparing them to watch list individuals, such red flags are present but not cleared. That is what data analytics is designed to do, is to help you go from tens of thousands of “maybes” to a very small number of potential issues which need to be researched individually.

One of the important functions of any best practices compliance program is to not only follow the money but try to spot where pots of money could be created to pay bribes. Through comparison of invoices for similar items among similar vendors, data analytics uncover overcharges and fraudulent billings. Continual transaction monitoring and data analysis can prove its value through more frequent review, as individuals tend to perform better when they know they are being monitored.

The techniques used in transaction monitoring for suspicious invoices can be easily translated into data analysis for anti-corruption. Software allows a very large aggregation of suspicious payments not only by day or by month, but also by vendor or even by employee who may have keyed the invoices into your system. As these suspicious invoices begin to cluster by market, business unit or person a pattern forms which can be the basis of additional inquiry. That is the value of analytics. Analytics allows a compliance practitioner to sort and resort, combine and aggregate, so that patterns can be investigated more fully.

This final concept, of finding patterns that can be discerned through the aggregation of huge amounts of transactions, is the next step for compliance functions. Yet data analysis does far more than simply allow you to follow the money. It can be a part of your third party ongoing monitoring as well by allowing you to partner the information on third parties who might come into your company where there was no proper compliance vetting. The opportunity for continuous improvement through a feedback loop is obvious and a clear step you should take going forward.  

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Always remember to follow the money to see where a pot of money could be created to fund a bribe.
  2. Transaction monitoring techniques around fraud monitoring translate to data analysis for compliance.
  3. Do not forget to check names against known PEP and SDN lists. 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 8, 2017

Sheila Hooda is an independent director, advisor to CEOs, former C-level operating executive with 30+ years of global experience. She has provided strategic direction, driven growth and transformed Fortune 500 firms.

Ms. Hooda is CEO of Alpha Advisory Partners and serves on the boards of Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company and Virtus Investment Partners. She is a thought leader and regular contributor and speaker on governance, strategy and leadership.

Prior to her board service, Ms. Hooda has held senior operating roles at TIAA, Credit Suisse Investment Bank, Thomson Reuters and McKinsey & Co., across the US, Europe and Asia/India. Ms. Hooda is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and also serves on boards focusing on Education, Women’s Empowerment and Global Policy.

In this episode we discuss the key role Board of Directors around oversight of strategy. She discusses her views on the Board’s role in working with senior mgmt strategy. We then consider risk as a key compoenet of strategy and the Board’s role in assessing risk as it intersects with strategy. We then turn to the stpe in the risk management process of (1) forecasting, (2) risk assessment and (3) risk based monitoring and the Board’s role in this process. We also discuss the types of information a senior executive should present to a Board around stratetgic risk and what types of training should a Board member received on risk, risk management and strategic risk.

Aug 7, 2017

Third parties still present the highest risk around FCPA compliance. It is therefore critical that you use monitoring and auditing when it comes to continuous improvement for this high-risk area. Today I want to consider three aspects of a company’s audit program for its compliance function: the types and purpose of third-party audits, planning for third-party audits and interviewing third parties.

Aug 7, 2017

Today I visit with Timur Khasanov-Batirov. Tim is a compliance practitioner with focus at high-risk markets and author of practical guide “Integrity Corp. 50 Tips for Your Compliance Program in the Post-Soviet States.  Timur has worked in compliance, legal, consulting, and corporate governance roles in Russia, Uzbekistan, the United States, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.  He has successfully launched and supervised execution of compliance programs for global and local businesses in the mining, energy, and pharmaceutical industries.

Tim has also recently released the first two installments of Compliance Man the first graphic novel of a compliance practitioner. You can find out more about Tim on his firm’s website, Complianceinpostussr.com.

We look at the former Soviet Union states, one of the most interesting region for Compliance professionals. we will touch 10 hot questions on corporate ethics in this region. Tim answers the following questions

1: Can we define this region as a single territory for the Compliance program structuring?

2: What regulatory trends should be taken in consideration by compliance practitioners in charge of this geography?

3: What is the biggest challenge in embedding corporate Compliance program in this region?

4:  Do you have any practical recommendations as to “dissemination of integrity” among personnel locally?  

5: Is it legally permissible to deploy our FCPA/UKBA programs in the countries of the region?

6: What is the most effective way to deliver training in this part of the world?

7: If there are any important things to remember when imposing penalties for misconduct on local personnel?

8: Do people on the ground appreciate compliance & ethics efforts?

 

Aug 5, 2017

Show Notes for This Week in FCPA-Episode 64, for the week ending August 4, the 10 Year Anniversary Edition

In this special Saturday edition, Jay and I return for a wide-ranging discussion on some of the week’s top compliance and ethics related stories, including:

 Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. obtains a full declination. Yet the company went through the investigation after being turned in by a competitor. Bryan Cave attorneys Mark Srere and Kristin Robinson explore in their article FCPA Investigations – Competitors Dropping the Dime.

  1. OFAC brings an enforcement action against a non-US company. See article in the FCPA Blog.
  2. Financial health as an indicia for third parties and corruption. See Tom’s article What is the Financial Health of Your Third Parties.
  3. MasterCard uses a Richard Bistrong video in its compliance training. See article by Sam Rubenfeld in WSJ.
  4. After 10 years, the FCPA Blog is still dancing. See Dick Cassin’s article in the FCPA Blog.
  5. Across the Board premiers. In this new podcast, I explore issues relating to the Board of Directors, risk management and corporate governance. In Episode 1, Richard Lummis and I consider the role of the Uber Board of Directors in the company’s struggles. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra.
  6. This month’s podcast series on One Month to a More Effective Compliance program has premiered. In August I review how to have greater continuous improvement in your compliance program. Affiliated Monitors is this month’s sponsor. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra.
  7. Jay reports on the state of compliance in Mexico and Panama.
  8. Jay discusses his latest piece for the SCCE Magazine, How compliance can be a business advantage

 

Aug 4, 2017

Most Chief Compliance Officers (CCOs) and compliance practitioners understand the need for continuous controls monitoring. Whether it be as a part of your overall monitoring of third parties, employees, or to test the overall effectiveness of internal controls and compliance, controls monitoring is clearly a part of a best practices compliance program. Further, while most compliance practitioners are aware of the tools which can be applied to controls monitoring, they may not be as aware of how to engage in the process. Put another way, how do you develop a methodology for building a controls monitoring process that yields sustainable, repeatable results? 

I recently put that question to one of the leaders in the field, Joe Oringel, co-founder and principal at Visual Risk IQ. He explained that their firm has a five-step process. The five steps are (1) Brainstorm, (2) Acquire and Map Data, (3) Write Queries, (4) Analyze and Report, and (5) Refine and Sustain. 

Brainstorm 

Under this step, the controls monitoring specialist, subject matter expert (SME), such as one on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or other anti-corruption law, and the compliance team members sit down and go through a multi-item list to better understand the objectives and set the process going forward. The brainstorming session will include planning the monitoring objectives and understanding the data sources available to the team. Understanding relationships between the monitoring objectives and data sources is essential to the monitoring process. During brainstorming, the company’s risk profile and its existing internal controls should be reviewed and discussed. Finally, there should be a selection of the controls monitoring queries and a prioritization thereon. This initial meeting should include company representatives from a variety of disciplines including compliance, audit, IT, legal and finance departments, sales and business development may also need to be considered for this initial brainstorming session. 

Acquire and Map Data 

The second step is to obtain the data. There may be a need to discuss security considerations, whether or how to redact or mask sensitive data, and ensure files are viewable only by team members with a “need to know”. Balancing, which consists of comparing the number of records, checksums, and controls totals between the source file (as computed by the file export) and then re-calculated number of records, checksums, and control totals (as computed by a file import utility). Balancing is performed to make sure that no records are dropped or somehow altered, and that the files have integrity. Somewhat related is making sure that the version of the files used is the “right” one. For example if you are required to obtain year-end data year-end close could be weeks after the closing entries have been actually recorded, depending on the departments engaged in the year end processes.

Types of systems of record could include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) data from multiple controls processing systems, including statistics on numbers and locations of vendors, brokers and agents. You may also want to consider watch lists from organizations such as the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the Transparency International - Corruption Perceptions Index (TI-CPI), lists of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) or other public data source information. Some of the data sources include information from your vendor master file, general ledger journals, payment data from accounts payable, P-cards or your travel and entertainment system(s). You should also consider sales data and contract awards, as correlation between spending and sales as these may be significant. Finally, do not forget external data sources such as your third-party controls. All data should initially be secured and then transmitted to the controls monitoring tool. Of course, you need to take care that your controls monitoring tool understands and properly maps this data in the form that is submitted.

Write Queries 

This is where the FCPA SME brings expertise and competence to assist in designing the specific queries to include in the controls monitoring process. It could be that you wish to focus on the billing of your third parties; your employee spends on gifts, travel and entertainment or even petty cash outlays. From the initial results that you receive back you can then refine your queries and filter your criteria going forward. Some of the queries could include the following: 

  • Business courtesies provided to foreign officials;
  • Payments to brokers or consultants;
  • Payments to service intermediaries;
  • Payments to vendors in high risk markets;
  • Round dollar disbursements;
  • Political contributions or charitable donations; and
  • Facilitation payments. 

Analyze and Report 

In this process step, you are now ready to begin substantive review and any needed research of potential exceptions and reporting results. Evaluating the number of potential exceptions and modifying queries to yield a meaningful yet manageable number of potential exceptions going forward is critical to long-term success. You should prioritize your initial results by size, age and source of potential exception. Next you should perform a root cause analysis of what you might have uncovered. Finally at this step you can prioritize the data for further review through a forensic review. An example might be if you look at duplicate payments or vendor to employee conflicts. Through such an analysis you determine if there were incomplete vendor records, whether duplicate payments were made and were such payments within your contracts terms and conditions. 

Refine and Sustain 

This is the all-important remediation step. You should use your root cause analysis and any audit information to recalibrate your compliance regime as required. At this step you should also apply the lessons you have learned for your next steps going forward. You should refine, through addition or deletion of your input files, thresholds for specific queries, or other query refinements. For example, if you have set your dollar limits so low that too many potential exceptions resulted for a thoughtful review, you might raise your dollar threshold for monitoring. Conversely if your selected amount was so low that it did not generate sufficient controls, you could lower your parameter limits. Finally, you can use this step to determine the frequency of your ongoing monitoring.   

If you can establish your extraction and mapping rules, using common data models within your organization, you can use them to generate risk and performance checks going forward. Finally, through thoughtful use of controls monitoring parameters, you can create metrics that you can internally benchmark your compliance regime against over time to show any regulators who might come knocking. 

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Create a process to monitor your controls.
  2. Use a compliance subject matter expert to work with your internal controls specialist to develop queries from the compliance perspective.
  3. Finally, do not forget the feedback loop nature of the process by integrating your results going forward. 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 3, 2017

Next I consider how the Internal Audit (IA) function can be used to facilitate more effective continuous improvement.  According to the Institute of Internal Auditors, IA “is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization’s operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes.” Some of the key compliance activities of IA are to maintain its independence; to conduct auditing activity of awareness and adherence to policies, procedures, internal controls and corporate governance, including those relating to legal, compliance and ethics risks; to ensure there is follow up of recommendations made in IA reports, including those relating to compliance and ethics risks, including to track and report on management follow up; assist and collaborate on internal investigations, including having IA provide audit expertise in dealing with internal controls and financial data; assist in both design and auditing of internal controls and follow up as required. Clearly this is function which is and should be integrated into compliance.                                                             

IA is doing compliance all the time as it acts as the watchdog for a company in a variety of areas. IA could be looking at what steps are being taken to comply with HR policies, what steps are being taken to comply with various compliance requirements or policies and procedures. In performing such audits, IA could look at the questions of whether the employees are aware of standards of business conduct; whether they aware of the anti-corruption policies; what controls are in place; and whether they are effective in the implementation locally. 

It should be apparent there are numerous benefits to compliance having a closer and more robust integration with IA. Some of the more obvious ones include some of the topics I have previously explored this week such as leveraging compliance and ethics resources, strong investigation resources to explore risk and internal controls issue, broad awareness of compliance risks as they relate to the process or audit issues, an overall strengthening of the IA network throughout the company. Another area is through the leveraging of joint vendor resources that would be available to both, such as professional development, forensic accounting and other professional consultants, having ethics and compliance insights when recommending or making recommendations that are derived from internal audits. 

One area which IA brings insight to that is critical to compliance but not well understood by compliance practitioners, particularly those with a legal background, is in internal controls, which form the very backbone of a best practices compliance program. Indeed, the Evaluation, Prong 4 asks the following, “GatekeepersHas there been clear guidance and/or training for the key gatekeepers (e.g., the persons who issue payments or review approvals) in the control processes relevant to the misconduct? What has been the process for them to raise concerns?” 

When an audit around controls is performed at the country, region, or business unit level, there should be coordination between compliance and IA on the audit plan. By doing so, it allows compliance to impart the need to determine how the internal controls, their design and effectiveness might impact issues around bribery and corruption under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Of course, ancillary compliance topics such as money laundering, trade sanctions, data privacy and data security can also be seamlessly considered by IA so an audit plan is as strong as possible given the time and resources available to pursue the audit.

From the compliance aspects, IA is really kind of the watchdog or monitoring facility for the entire company. This dovetails explicitly into this ‘gatekeeper’ function. Additionally, and depending on the risk profile of the company and the way in which the audit schedule is set, IA can assist to operationalize compliance in other ways. For instance, IA could be looking at what steps are being taken to comply with HR policies, what steps are being taken to comply with various legal requirements or compliance requirements. I have certainly seen numerous instances where internal audit in doing a country audit in a country in Europe, would make some of the following inquiries: "Are these people aware of standards of business conduct? Are they aware of the anti-corruption policies; and What controls are in place and are those effective in the implementation locally?"” Depending on the answers to these audit inquiries, compliance or better yet, compliance in conjunction with audit and HR could develop a remediation plan.           

With such integration both groups benefit. IA can perform stronger investigations around to enterprise risks and internal controls issues, through a broader awareness of compliance risks which might occur related to audit issues or audit processes.  Such integration can work to strengthen IA's network throughout company, leverage joint vendor resources such as professional development, internal controls, forensic accounting and other consultants and provide additional compliance insights when making recommendations following internal audits. 

For its part, the compliance function can leverage IA resources and professionals, on audit techniques and analysis of internal controls. Equally such integration extends the corporate compliance influence through the company’s IA network using existing IA resources such as ACL and other ERP systems and IT query systems. Finally, it allows the corporate compliance function to be made aware of relevant concerns uncovered during audits so compliance is more fully able to participate in recommendations and follow up. 

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Internal audit can be used to provide continuous improvement to and for compliance.
  2. Internal audit can also fill a gatekeeper role in your compliance regime.
  3. Compliance should leverage IA resources and professionals, on audit techniques and analysis of internal controls. 

For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit this month’s sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Aug 3, 2017

In this inaugural podcast of Across the Board, I consider the Holder Report to the Uber Board of Directors, which led to the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick. In June, the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP (Covington), released its long-awaited report (Report) to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber). It is truly one of the most unique corporate documents you will ever see. The Report was commissioned after Susan Fowler, a former engineer at Uber, published a blog post detailing allegations of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation during her employment at Uber, and the ineffectiveness of the company’s then-existing policies and procedures. The next day, Uber retained Covington. This podcast discusses the Holder Report and the role of the Uber Board. 

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