In Due Diligence and World Cup Bids: Follow the Money

For those watching the 2104 World Cup, this year’s tournament has certainly been spectacular, from the US reaching the round of 16, the incredible goals scored by Robbie Van Persie and Tim Cahill, to yesterday’s heartbreak for Mexico, who led until the 88^th minute, only to be tied and then loose in stoppage time to the Netherlands, this year’s event has been one for the ages. However one very large shadow hangs over the sport’s governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) and allegations of corruption in its award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

There were reports as far back as 2011 that Mohamed bin Hammam, offered bribes to members of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) at a meeting organized by the Fifa vice-president, Jack Warner. As reported by The Guardian, in a 2011 article, entitled “Fifa in crisis after claims against Jack Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam”, Owen Gibson reported, “nine of Fifa’s 24 executive committee members have been accused of corruption in recent months.” But these 2011 reports have paled in comparison to the reports detailed in the past few months regarding allegations of corruptions concerning the award of the 2022 tournament to Qatar.

Earlier this month, The Sunday Times rocked the sporting world with its article “Plot to Buy the World Cup” by Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake. In the article, they reported that a number of football officials took £3m in return for support of the Qatari bid. The BBC, in an article entitled “Qatar World Cup 2022: Investigator nears probe conclusion”, said “The Sunday Times claims to have obtained secret documents that implicate the former AFC president in corrupting members of football’s governing body to win the right to stage the 2022 World Cup. The newspaper alleges the documents, seen by BBC sports editor David Bond, show that Qatari Bin Hammam, 65, was lobbying on his country’s behalf at least a year before the decision to award the country hosting rights. They also allegedly show he had made payments into accounts controlled by the presidents of 30 African football associations and accounts controlled by Trinidadian Jack Warner, a former vice-president of Fifa.”

This initial account has been supplemented by additional reports detailing these allegations. In another article in The Guardian, entitled “Mohamed bin Hammam accused of payments to help Qatar World Cup bid”, Agence France-Presse wrote that “Bin Hammam also paid $1.6m into bank accounts controlled by the Trinidadian Jack Warner, also a former vice-president of Fifa, $450,000 of which was before the vote for the World Cup”, citing the report in The Sunday Times. Both Qatar and bin Hammam have denied any improprieties in the award of the bid to Qatar.

But there were more reports of payments to those voting on the Qatar bid beyond Jack Warner. In a June 16^th report in the online publication, República, entitled “ANFA chief admits receiving money from Hammam” it reported that Nepal Football Association (ANFA) President Ganesh Thapa had been promised $800,000 from bin Hammam and had been paid $115,000. It also reported that Thapa’s son received $100,000 from bin Hamman. Thapa was quoted as saying that the money was for a business deal, “It is right that I received $115,000 but it was in connection with the business I have partnered with Hammam.”

There have been other issues raised regarding Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup. One is its treatment of the workers who are building the stadiums for the event and the appalling conditions that the workers building the stadiums to host the event are facing. In an article in the online magazine Slate, entitled “The Qatar World Cup Is a Human Rights Catastrophe. It’s Time to Do Something About It” Jeremy Stahl reported that the Nepali embassy has said 400 citizens of its country had died during construction in Qatar and India has reported that 500 of its citizens have died. The article quoted Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), who said in an ESPN documentary “that at current rates, 4,000 people will die to make the 2022 World Cup a reality.” The ITUC itself had reported in March that there had been 1200 deaths in the construction of the facilities for the World Cup.

Another significant issue is the heat. Qatar can reach between 40-50C during the summer months, and for those of you who don’t read Celsius temperatures that translates to between 104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. I have been in such temperatures and I can assure you that is hot weather. However, although Fifa awarded the 2022 World Cup tournament to Qatar back in 2011, it has only now become aware of the fact that there is hot weather in the summer months in Qatar. If you have watched any games in this year’s tournament, you have seen European players wilt in 80+ degree, which for a Texan is rather pleasant. But no matter how much conditioned air you can pump into a stadium in Qatar, the fact is that it will be 120+ outside.

Even if the stadiums are air conditioned, how are you going to walk to them in that heat? To say that Fifa was unaware that it gets hot in the summer in Qatar seems disingenuous at best. As reported by Roger Blitz, in a Financial Times (FT) article entitled “Fifa faces quandary over World Cup in Qatar”, Sepp Blatter, Fifa President, has gone on record to say that awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was “a mistake”.

But as my friend Mike Brown might say that when you are performing due diligence, ‘follow the money’. This is not only important in thinking about allegations of corruption in the award of the bid to Qatar but also in the overall context of Fifa and the World Cup. It has been estimated that over one-tenth of the world’s population is watching this year’s World Cup. In the US alone, the interest is so high its game against Portugal had more viewers than Game 5 (the final game) of the recent NBA championship. This could well lead to billions for the television rights in 2022 alone. That means that advertisers and sponsors will be paying a pretty penny to be associated with World Cup 2022. Do you think some of the current sponsors, such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony or Visa will want to be associated with such allegations of corruption or deaths of workers from such appalling working conditions?

There is a chorus growing to move the 2022 World Cup from Qatar to another country. Speaking with its usual grownup voice, the FT editorial board has called for a re-vote on the location of the 2022 World Cup tournament venue, in an article entitled “Blow the whistle on Fifa, please”, they said, “The case for rerunning the bid for the 2022 competition looks unassailable. Final judgment should await a pending report into the Qatar bid by Fifa’s top internal investigator. But a string of controversies – among them the health concerns over staging the competition in Qatar’s furnace-like climate – means a new venue is now needed.” But more than simply re-voting on the 2022 bid, the FT said, “Western governments and lawmakers should therefore bring their influence to bear. The US Congress could consider holding hearings to examine the relations between American multinationals and Fifa. US companies have to abide by stringent anti-corruption laws. Congress would be right to examine the implications of US companies doing business with a major international body that has such weak governance. Such public hearings might make corporate sponsors reconsider their stance.”

What are the lesson for the compliance practitioner? Sometimes you need to step back and look at the big overall picture. If a deal has come into your company that is particularly high reward, it generally means that it was high risk. You may want to do a more in-depth look at all aspects of the deal, from the business partners involved, to your internal gifts, travel and entertainment for your employees involved in securing the contract. Putting a second or even third set of eyes on something might well protect your company if something does not seem right, feel right or look right.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

The Berlin Airlift and Different Approaches to Compliance Issues

As the USA played Germany in the World Cup yesterday, it is perhaps appropriate that we look back at another June 26^th event that involved the US as we celebrate one of the great relief efforts in post-war Europe and the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift. On June 26, 1948, US and British pilots begin delivering food and supplies by airplane to Berlin after the city is isolated by a Soviet Union blockade. Though some in President Truman’s administration called for a direct military response to this aggressive Soviet move, the President was concerned that such a response would trigger another world war. As an alternative, he coordinated a massive airlift operation under the control of General Lucius D. Clay, the American-appointed military governor of Germany. The first planes took off from England and western Germany on June 26, loaded with food, clothing, water, medicine and fuel. By July 15, an average of 2,500 tons of supplies was being flown into the city every day. The massive scale of the airlift made it a huge logistical challenge and at times a great risk, with planes landing at Tempelhof Airport every four minutes, round the clock for the next 15 months. This broke the Soviet blockade.

I thought about this alternative approach that Truman employed, a supply line rather than a military response, when I read MIT Sloan Management Review article, entitled “What Businesses Can Learn From Sports Analytics”, by Thomas H. Davenport. In his article, Davenport explored how “the use of analytics in the sports world has much to teach managers about alignment, performance improvement and business ecosystems.”

For his article, Davenport “interviewed more than 30 representatives of teams, sports analytics vendors and consultants for a report on the state of the art in sports analytics,” in which he “focused on three different areas of activity, each of which is growing rapidly. In order of decreasing prevalence, they are: team and player performance analytics, sports business analytics, and health and injury prevention analytics.” From this research, he developed five key lessons that almost any business could adopt. However I thought about his points in the context of compliance ecosystems rather than business ecosystems so I will use his article as a starting point to consider what compliance can learn from sports analytics.

1. Align leadership at multiple levels 

Davenport believes “In sports, key decisions — which players to acquire, how much to pay them, and which strategies to adopt for better athletic and business performance — must be made and overseen at multiple levels. As a result, alignment along different management levels is crucial.” Based on his research I believe the message for Chief Compliance Officers (CCOs), compliance practitioners and analytical practitioners is to work together closely and consult frequently.

2. Focus on the human dimension 

Davenport’s key finding about sports teams is that they realize that their players are both their most important and expensive resources and that sports teams focus on the human dimension of performance in a variety of ways. “First, they address individual-level game performance by monitoring points scored, rebounds gathered, batting averages and other increasingly sophisticated measures of both offensive and defensive performance… Second, teams are beginning to assess not just individual performance, but performance in context.” They will also assess a team’s performance “with and without a combination of players.”

However, if companies say they focus on their employees as their most valuable resource, they typically only focus their analytics on “operational or marketing issues and not on the human dimension of performance.” The key insight here is for compliance to focus on more of a team aspect by investigating a group’s compliance performance “with or without a particular person’s presence could be a valuable insight.” This could be expanded to reviewing wider sales teams in a region, country or product/service line.

3. Exploit video and locational data 

In Major League Soccer (MLS), players wear a GPS-based locational device that captures all movements around the field. In the NBA, six cameras in the ceiling of each arena capture all movements of the players and ball. All Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums have cameras that track every pitch, and many teams also track every hit and fielding play with video cameras. This allows a more complete view of the raw numbers that metrics generates.

While it may not seem readily apparent, this type of approach can also benefit the compliance function. The key is that it looks at raw numbers in a different way. So transaction monitoring could be pared with relationship monitoring or other indicia. Also travel and communications could be considered to show what might be happening in locations that are not readily apparent. The key takeaway is that there is more information available by obtaining more types of data.

4. Work within a broader ecosystem

Davenport found that “Professional sports teams are relatively small businesses, with much of their revenue going toward player salaries, leaving just nominal funds for any data and analytics projects. As a result, teams often need to work within a broader ecosystem of data, software and services providers.” Based on this he believes that a “key in these partnerships is to draw as much as possible from the partner while maintaining key internal capabilities.”

For the compliance professional, you should try to develop relations with key vendors because there are just too many different techniques, types of data and other aspects of analytics to exploit, and even the largest corporation can’t excel on its own. The GRC Pundit, Michael Rasmussen has observed that in GRC there is more than one technology. The same holds true in the compliance space. Jon Rydberg, founder of the Orchid Advisors, has called this the “Compliance Ecosystem Transformation” which he defines as “The coordinated development of compliance activities that transcend your entire supply chain, from suppliers – to manufacturers – to distributors – to retailers.”

5. Support “analytical amateurs”

Finally, Davenport found that “Some professional athletes have begun to analyze their own performance in depth using public or team data and reports. Specifically, a number of soccer and football players have become assiduous reviewers of their video and GPS data, although the most frequent users have been professional baseball players, particularly pitchers.”

For the compliance professional, this translates that they could also benefit from becoming such ‘analytical amateurs”. Moreover, they could work with business unit personnel to could keep track of their own scores on compliance measures and use that information to improve their performance. Analytics-minded salespeople and managers could, for example, use the extensive data from compliance management management systems to assess and improve their performance.

I found Davenport’s article to be quite thought provoking. For just as President Truman was able to come up with a different approach for a situation that could have led to World War III or at the very least a completely communist dominated unified Berlin, there are different ways to look at problems and find solutions. Using the analytical approach that has become so prevalent in the sports world may lead you to new and different thinking in the compliance arena.This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

Coolness in Being the Bad Guy? Eli Wallach and GSK

Eli Wallach died Tuesday. For my money, he was about the coolest bad guy out there. Not tough like Lee Marvin, just cool. My favorite Wallach roles were as Calvera in The Magnificent Seven and as Tuco in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. An early proponent of method acting, Wallach performed on the stage and in films for over 60 years. Although originally from Brooklyn, Wallach was also a fellow Texas Longhorn, having attended the University of Texas. He served in France as a Second Lieutenant in France during World War II.

I thought about Wallach’s über coolness when considering the most decided uncool position of the UK pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) recently. Last month the Chinese government issued a most very stern warning to GSK when it accused the former head of GSK’s China business of direct involvement in bribery and corruption. But more than this direct accusation, the move was a clear warning shot across the bow of not only western pharmaceutical companies doing business in China but also all western companies. In an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), entitled “Beijing Warns Sernly on Glaxo”, Laurie Birkett quoted Helen Chen, a director and partner at consultancy L.E.K., as saying “Focusing much of the blame on a foreigner sends a strong message to all. Companies will see that if authorities are willing to accuse even a foreigner, who is in senior management, the issue is being taken seriously, it’s a clear message that bribery is unacceptable in the market.” Burkitt went on to say, “Experts say China’s medical system is deeply underfunded, giving doctors, hospitals and administrators an incentive to overcharge and overprescribe. Glaxo, in the past, organized trips for doctors around China and to places such as Budapest and Greece as part of a broader effort involving perks and cash to get doctors to boost drug prescriptions, according to documents previously reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.”

Such reports of endemic corruption are not new. An article, entitled “GSK China probe flags up wider worries”, in the Wednesday edition of the Financial Times (FT) reporters Andrew Jack and Patti Waldmeir discussed not only the endemic nature of corruption in China but how, in many ways, the Chinese health care system is based on such corruption. The piece quoted George Baeder, an independent drug industry advisor, for the following, “Financial flows – both legal and illegal – tied to drug and device sales are funding perhaps 60-80 per cent of total hospital costs. Without this funding, the current system would collapse.” Further, “central and provincial Chinese governments cannot afford to pay doctors a living wage, and may patients cannot afford to pay the true cost of care.” And finally, “Up to now, Beijing has turned a blind eye as pharma companies find ways to subsidise doctor salaries and underwrite their medical education.” How about that for structural corruption?

Intertwined with this structural issue is the problem of the quantity and quality of the drug supply. Many Chinese doctors do not feel that there is an acceptable alternative to foreign pharmaceutical products. This drives up the cost of prescribed medicines, as this quantity is therefore limited. But even where indigenous Chinese generic drugs are available as alternatives, many patients do not trust these medicines. This restricts the quality of drugs available.

But with this recent round of accusations against GSK it appears that the Chinese government has opened a new front. In an article in The Telegraph, entitled “GSK bribery scan could cause ‘irreparable damage’, says China”, Denise Roland reported that “Beijing has apparently issued a warning to all foreign firms, cautioning that the corruption charges against GlaxoSmithKline executives could cause “irreparable damage” to the drug maker’s Chinese operations.” She quoted from the state news agency Xinhua for the following, “GSK’s practices eroded its corporate integrity and could cause irreparable damage to the company in China and elsewhere. The case is a warning to other multinationals in China that ethics matter.”

In addition to these charges against a senior GSK executive, which could lead liability up to the GSK boardroom, Jonathan Russell, also writing in The Telegraph, in an article entitled “GlaxoSmithKline is facing more than double jeopardy”, said that “GlaxoSmithKline’s problems are multiplying fast. In China authorities have identified 46 individuals connected to the company they claim were involved in “massive and systemic bribery”. In the UK the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) marked out its pitch this week, revealing it has opened an official investigation into allegations of bribery; and an internal GSK probe is looking at potential wrongdoing in Jordan and Lebanon.” More ominously, he also noted that “Given the slew of allegations so far it seems a fair assumption that other international law enforcement agencies, notably the US Department of Justice, will be taking a long, close look at the allegations.”

While Russell points to the general UK prohibition against prosecutions, which might invoke double jeopardy, he says “As ever with the law there are exceptions to the principle. However they are limited in scope and rare in number. It may also be the case that the principle of double jeopardy may not be invoked in this case if the alleged offences the SFO is investigating are separate to those under investigation in China. They could relate to matters that took place in Jordan or Lebanon.” Russell also pointed out that “international prosecutors carving up parts of prosecutions so they can all have their pound of flesh. A very painful prospect for GSK.” It will also be interesting to see if GSK is charged under the UK Bribery Act, under the prior law or both. If charges are brought under the Bribery Act, which became effective on July 1, 2011, do you think GSK would try and raise a compliance defense based on the Six Principals of Adequate Procedures? I guess having a compliance defense is pretty useless if your company engages in bribery and corruption.

While Russell talks about the aggressiveness of US prosecutors under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), he does not discuss what may be GSK’s greatest exposure in the US. GSK was under the equivalent of a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) called a Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) for its prior sins related to off-label marketing. This CIA not only applied to the specific pharmaceutical regulations that GSK violated but all of the GSK compliance obligations, including the FCPA. In addition to requiring a full and complete compliance program, the CIA specified that the company would have a Compliance Committee, inclusive of the Compliance Officer (CO) and other members of senior management necessary to meet the requirements of this CIA, whose job was to oversee full implementation of the CIA and all compliance functions at the company. These additional functions required Deputy Compliance Officers for each commercial business unit, Integrity Champions within each business unit and management accountability and certifications from each business unit. Training of GSK employees was specified. Further, there was detail down to specifically state that all compliance obligations applied to “contractors, subcontractors, agents and other persons (including, but not limited to, third party vendors)”.

For the compliance practitioner, one clear message from the GSK matter is to monitor, audit and continuously review your Chinese operations. I will have more to say about the China corruption crackdown in an upcoming blog post but just like Eli Wallach as Calvera in The Magnificent Seven told the gunmen hired to protect the Mexican village, you have been warned.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

Another FIFA Compliance Failure – Referees at the World Cup

Although the organization puts on arguably the greatest sporting event for professional athletes on the planet, the term ‘professionalism’ is probably not one you can associate with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Unfortunately this lack of professionalism can and does impact this greatest sporting event, the quadrennial World Cup currently going on in Brazil. This is particularly true in the area of referees.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), entitled “The Problem with World Cup Referees”, reporter Joshua Robinson explored that precise topic. There are several problems with FIFA’s approach to referees. The first is a conscious approach, which is designed not to put the most professional referees on the pitch. FIFA does select the most experienced or even the referees who show the best performance. Rather, “While the World Cup’s 32 teams must play their way into the tournament through a grueling two-year qualifying process, FIFA, the sport’s governing body, pulls referees from more than 40 countries out of a sense of fairness to all of its member associations.” In other words, a person who has never even been to a World Cup, who referees local clubs in Tahiti, “is a pulled hamstring away from the biggest stage in the game. And it isn’t just the alternates who lack experience. Among the 24 official referees are several who have never called games involving big-name teams and players.”

Steve Jaive, an ESPN refereeing analyst and a former NBA official, was quoted in the article as saying “I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t have the best soccer officials there.” Moreover, “some critics believe that World Cup games ought to use referees with experience ejecting superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo.
David Elleray, a retired English Premier League (EPL) referee was quoted as follows “A referee from Brazil, Argentina, Italy, England, week in, week out, they are refereeing high-profile matches.”

To compound this race towards ineptitude, FIFA stubbornly refuses to enter the 21^st Century and use the technology available to it to get the calls right. As noted by Robinson, “Perhaps befitting a sport founded in England, soccer is an officiating monarchy. Each game features a single referee whose calls can’t be challenged on the field or—until this World Cup—assisted by goal-line technology. Although two linesmen run along the edge of the pitch raising flags to indicate offside and fouls, the referee is free to ignore those calls.” Anyone who remembers the 2010 World Cup and the absolutely pathetic level of competency by the referees will welcome even this modest advance.

Yet another problem that FIFA stubbornly refuses to address is the pay for referees. The last time FIFA publicly announced the compensation for referees at the World Cup was back in 2006 and then it was listed at $38,000. That is an incredibly small amount of money for such an important role. The entire FIFA referee system has come under greater concern because of match-fixing allegations. In a two part series in the New York Times (NYT); part 1 was entitled “Fixed Soccer Matches Cast Shadow Over World Cup” and part 2 was entitled “Inside the Fixing: How a Gang Battered Soccer’s Frail Integrity”, reporters Declan Hill and Jeré Longman wrote about a NYT investigation of match fixing ahead of the last World Cup and provided an unusually detailed look at the ease with which professional gamblers can fix matches. The article reviewed an “internal, confidential report by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body. FIFA’s investigative report and related documents, which were obtained by The New York Times and have not been publicly released, raise serious questions about the vulnerability of the World Cup to match fixing.” The reporters noted that the FIFA “report found that the match-rigging syndicate and its referees infiltrated the upper reaches of global soccer in order to fix exhibition matches and exploit them for betting purposes. It provides extensive details of the clever and brazen ways that fixers apparently manipulated “at least five matches and possibly more” in South Africa ahead of the last World Cup. As many as 15 matches were targets, including a game between the United States and Australia, according to interviews and emails printed in the FIFA report.”

These NYT articles detailed how betting syndicates would target the national football associations that are charged with selecting and supplying the referees in international matches. The articles pointed out how the betting syndicates would find the weakest link in any security or compliance system and then exploit it. In the past World Cup it was both the South African football association that signed contracts allowing the betting syndicates to select the referees for games to actually bribery of referees themselves.

These problems were made more relevant on Monday with an article in The Telegraph, entitled “Football match-fixing: Ghana deal casts cloud over World Cup finals in Brazil”, in which reporters Claire Newell, Holly Watt and Ben Bryant detailed that the “Ghana Football Association calls in police after undercover investigation by The Telegraph and Channel Four’s Dispatches programme finds that the President of Ghana’s FA agreed for the team to play in international matches that others were prepared to rig.”

They wrote, “The president of the country’s football association then met the undercover reporter and investigator, along with Mr Forsythe and Mr Nketiah, and agreed a contract which would see the team play in the rigged matches, in return for payment. The contract stated that it would cost $170,000 (£100,000) for each match organised by the fixers involving the Ghanaian team, and would allow a bogus investment firm to appoint match officials, in breach of Fifa rules. “You [the company] will always have to come to us and say how you want it to go…the result,” said Mr Forsythe. “That’s why we will get the officials that we have greased their palms, so they will do it. If we bring in our own officials to do the match…You’re making your money. You have to give them [the referees] something… they are going to do a lot of work for you, so you have to give them something,” said Mr Nketiah, who is also the chief executive of the Ghanaian football club Berekum Chelsea and sits on the management committee of the Ghana U20 national team.”

In a meeting prior to the 2014 World Cup, when Ghana was playing warm-up matches in the US, Forsythe and Nketiah introduced the undercover team to Kwesi Nyantakyi, the president of the Ghana FA. In a meeting in “Florida, the president agreed to a contract that stated each match would cost the investment company $170,000 and that they could appoint the match officials for each game. A contract was drawn up that specified that “The Company will appoint and pay for the cost of the referees/match officials in consultation with an agreed Fifa Member association(s),” in direct breach of the rules that prohibit third parties from appointing officials, in order to protect their impartiality. During the meeting, the president suggested that the fictional investment company put on two matches after the World Cup to prove that they were able to organise games.”

What are the lessons for the compliance practitioner? I think two jump out from the examples from the world of FIFA. The first is to assess your risk. Clearly the style FIFA is using to manage the quality of its referee corp is less than acceptable. FIFA must provide clear evidence that the best quality of refereeing is on the field, together with the best players in the world. Further, technology should be employed to make sure it is the athletes who decide the outcome of a game, not some blown call. FIFA should ensure that ‘getting it right’ is what officiating is and not idiotic calls that any third-grader could see were incorrect.

But the second problem seems to me to be even greater. The system itself either lends itself to corruption or makes itself more susceptible to corruption. If a company has a sales structure that does not allow for proper oversight or even transparency, then the sales structure should be changed to allow such oversight. The money generated by the sport of soccer worldwide makes clear that professionalism must be brought to the referee ranks. If FIFA pays some paltry sum for men who hold the game literally in their hands, it needs to ensure that they can resist a bribe to fix matches.

As to the 2014 World Cup it has been spectacular, largely in spite of FIFA and not because of it. And, of course,

I believe

I believe that

I believe that we will win.

Go USA

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

An Event That Changed the World and Fostering Compliance Leadership – Part II

Yesterday, I used the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and its continuing legacy even up until today to introduce a two-part series about ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’. The assassination and some of its legacies were detailed in an article in the March 22 edition of the Financial Times (FT) in a piece by Simon Kuper entitled, ‘The crossroads of history”. In this article, Kuper wrote about his return to modern day Sarajevo “to try and understand his act in its local context – the context both of 1914 and 2104.” I think that Kuper did come to some understanding through his reporting, which I found to be first rate.

Yesterday I reviewed the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article entitled “Blue Ocean Leadership”, which I found to be one of the most interesting and perhaps even game-changing discussions on how to be a more effective leader that I have ever read or heard about. In Part I I wrote about what ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ is and how it differs from conventional leadership. Today, I will review the strategies of how to execute this type of leadership and explore its implications for the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance practitioner.

I was extraordinarily gratified to see that the authors believe that something akin to the Fair Process Doctrine should be used to address over-coming resistance to changing over to ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’. The Fair Process Doctrine recognizes that there are fair procedures, not arbitrary ones, in a process involving rights. People are more willing to accept negative, unfavorable, and non-preferred outcomes when they are arrived at by processes and procedures that are perceived as fair by employees. This means that that employees will commit to a manager’s decision—even one they disagree with—if they believe that the process the manager used to make the decision was fair.

 The authors write “the gift that fair process confers is trust and, hence, voluntary cooperation, a quality vital to the leader-follower relationship. Anyone who has ever worked in an organization understands how important trust is. If you trust the process and the people you work for, you’re willing to go the extra mile and give your best. If you don’t trust them, you’ll stick to the letter of the law that binds your contract with the organization and devote your energy to protecting your position and fighting over turf rather than to winning customers and creating value. Not only will your abilities be wasted, but they will often work against your organization’s performance.”

 The authors have a somewhat different formulation for fair process when they say that it includes “engagement, explanation and expectation clarity.” Further, the authors say “the leadership development context, the application of fair process achieves buy-in and ownership of the to-be Leadership Profiles and builds trust, preparing the ground for implementation.” The authors suggest four steps for implementing ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’.

Step 1 – Respected senior managers should spearhead the effort. Nothing speaks to company employees more than who is leading an initiative. The authors state, “strongly signals the importance of the initiative, which makes people at all levels feel respected and gives senior managers a visceral sense of what actions are needed to create a step change in leadership performance.”

Step 2 – Engaging the company’s rank and file in defining what leaders should do. This is the engagement prong of the fair process doctrine. If there is engagement, employees will “feel more deeply engaged with their leaders, because they have greater ownership of what their leaders are doing.”

Step 3 – Giving employees a say in the final decision. This allows a vertical slice of the organization, from the top to bottom to have a say in what the leadership profiles will be going forward. This comes though give and take and if senior management does not accept a proffered leadership profile, it must be prepared to defend its decision, through a “clear, sound explanation of their decision.”

Step 4 – Ease in assessment of whether expectations are being met and in monitoring progress. The authors suggest no less than monthly feedback “between leaders and their direct reports help the organization check whether it’s making headway.” The authors write that such a timeframe, will “keep leaders honest, motivate them to continue with change, and build confidence in both the process and the sincerity of the leaders. By collecting feedback from those meetings, top management can assess how rapidly leaders are making the shift from their as-is to their to-be Leadership Profiles, which becomes a key input in annual performance evaluations.”

There are many tangible benefits that the authors article discuss and those discussions can lead directly to the elimination of actions that senior management invest their time in. Even if some actions and activities cannot be entirely eliminated, they can be reduced. Conversely, these types of discussions can show senior management what acts and activities should be raised above their current level. Finally, this type of leadership protocol can show leaders the types of activities they should be engaging in that they are not currently undertaking.

For the compliance practitioner I think there are several important lessons and implications, which can be drawn from this article. Rather than start with the CCO, I want to take the opposite approach and begin with the compliance practitioner who is on the frontline. The clearest lesson from this scholarship is to “serve your customers, not the boss.” This means should try to eliminate your queries up the chain and try to handle direct issues yourself and reduce seeking approval for decisions. Frontline compliance practitioners need to raise more relevant compliance training and information to the business units or geographic areas they support. Finally, the frontline compliance practitioners should celebrate compliance successes locally.

For the mid-level compliance manager, they strive for ‘more coaching and less control’ from senior management. This means elimination of frequent requests for detailed progress reports on initiatives and programs. Further, there should be a reduction of requirements and review of justifications for decisions from the frontline compliance practitioners. Mid-level compliance practitioners should strive to not only understand but also explain compliance strategy clearly and empower frontline compliance practitioners to stretch themselves through more effective coaching. Finally, mid-level compliance managers should work to set performance goals together, share best practices across teams, business units and geographic regions and align rewards with performance.

The key for senior level compliance practitioners is to move from the day-to-day work to the bigger picture of compliance. As much as possible, senior compliance managers need to stop operational problem solving and putting out fires. If senior compliance managers cannot fully eliminate such actions, they should try and reduce the number of meetings dealing with operations improvement but also try and reduce the monitoring and coordination of middle management. Issues that senior compliance managers should try and raise up in activities awareness include dealing with poor performance, coaching and motivating their direct reports, creating a compelling strategy and then clearly communicating that strategy. Finally, senior compliance managers should develop a compliance agenda for the future (think Stephen Martin’s 1-3-5 year strategy) and advance a process for implementation of continual assessment and improvement of that strategy.

The authors write, “We never cease to be amazed by the talent and energy we see in the organizations we study. Sadly, we are equally amazed by how much of it is squandered by poor leadership. Blue ocean leadership can help put an end to that.” They put forward “a concrete, visual framework in which they can surface and discuss the improvements leaders need to make. The fairness of the process makes the implementation and monitoring of those changes far easier than in traditional top-down approaches. Moreover, blue ocean leadership achieves a transformation with less time and effort, because leaders are not trying to alter who they are and break the habits of a lifetime. They are simply changing the tasks they carry out. Better yet, one of the strengths of blue ocean leadership is its scalability. You don’t have to wait for your company’s top leadership to launch this process. Whatever management level you belong to, you can awaken the sleeping potential of your people by taking them through the four steps.”

I found their article to be quite compelling. I hope that you will consider some or all of these suggestions as a way to set up you and your compliance team to become Blue Ocean Leaders and un-tap the potential of your entire compliance team.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

An Event That Changed the World and Fostering Compliance Leadership – Part I

This coming Saturday, June 28th, is the 100^th anniversary of most probably the single most momentous event of the 20^th century; the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, then located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I view it as the singular event of the prior century because it led directly to the following events: the First World War, the Second World War, the Russian Revolution, the fall of the Hapsburg, Romanov and Prussian monarchies, the Cold War and a host of other events. One can point to 1963 in Dallas and 9/11 as direct descendants of the actions of the Sarajevo assassins.

One of the best articles I have ever read on the assassination was in the March 22^nd edition of the Financial Times (FT) in a piece by Simon Kuper, entitled ‘The crossroads of history”. Kuper returned to modern day Sarajevo “to try and understand his act in its local context – the context both of 1914 and 2104.” I think that Kuper did come to some understanding through his reporting, which I found to be first rate. The attack on the Archduke itself came about through a plethora of mis-steps, foolish decisions and idiotic mistakes that rival any modern day industrial catastrophe. Kuper quoted the author Rebecca West for the following, “Nobody worked to ensure the murder on either side as the people who were murdered.” As this assassination started Europe down a road that led to well over 20 million deaths, it is an appropriate start to many more posts I will have during the centenary of 1914.

Just as Gavrilo Princip changed the course of history, I recently read an article in the May edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) which I think could significantly modify how you, as a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance practitioner, will think about getting employees to “apply their talent and energy to move organizations forward” in compliance and ethics. The article is entitled “Blue Ocean Leadership”. In this two-part series I will explain the authors view of the problem that “According to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report, 50% of employees merely put their time in, while the remaining 20% act out their discontent in counterproductive ways, negatively influencing their coworkers, missing days on the job, and driving customers away through poor service. Gallup estimates that the 20% group alone costs the U.S. economy around half a trillion dollars each year.” The authors believe that “poor leadership is a key cause” of this problem. The authors posit that leadership is a “service that people in an organization “buy” or “don’t buy” and when employees come to value you as a leader, they “in effect buy your leadership.”

Today I will focus on how ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ differs from conventional leadership and tomorrow I will review strategies of how to execute this type of leadership and explore its implications for the CCO or compliance practitioner.

Key Differences from Conventional Leadership Approaches

The authors point to three key differences between ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ and traditional leadership approaches.

The first key difference is that ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ “focuses on what acts and activities leaders need to undertake to boost their teams’ motivation and business results, not on who leaders need to be. This difference in emphasis is important. It is markedly easier to change people’s acts and activities than their values, qualities, and behavioral traits. Of course, altering a leader’s activities is not a complete solution, and having the right values, qualities, and behavioral traits matters. But activities are something that any individual can change, given the right feedback and guidance.”

The second under ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ is to “connect closely to market realities”. This is accomplished by having “the people who face market realities are asked for their direct input on how their leaders hold them back and what those leaders could do to help them best serve customers and other key stakeholders. And when people are engaged in defining the leadership practices that will enable them to thrive, and those practices are connected to the market realities against which they need to perform, they’re highly motivated to create the best possible profile for leaders and to make the new solutions work.” This allows not only employee buy-in both also quicker and more efficient engagement of the implementation of a leaders program.

The third key difference is that ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ distributes leadership across all levels of management. The authors quoted one senior executive who said, “The truth is that we, the top management, are not in the field to fully appreciate the middle and frontline actions. We need effective leaders at every level to maximize corporate performance.” However ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ is more robustly “designed to be applied across the three distinct management levels: top, middle, and frontline. It calls for profiles for leaders that are tailored to the very different tasks, degrees of power, and environments you find at each level. Extending leadership capabilities deep into the front line unleashes the latent talent and drive of a critical mass of employees, and creating strong distributed leadership significantly enhances performance across the organization.”

The Four Steps of Blue Ocean Leadership

Most importantly the authors believe that you have to see your leadership for what it is and not what you wish it to be. If you do not have a “common understanding of where leadership stands and is falling short, a forceful case for change cannot be made.” The authors created a template that they called “Leadership Canvases” which are visual representations to show what leaders actually do, rather than what they think they do. The authors’ research showed that 20% to 40% of all actions taken by managers are of little value to the organization. This led to the “biggest “aha” for the subteams was that senior managers appeared to have scarcely any time to do the real job of top management—thinking, probing, identifying opportunities on the horizon, and gearing up the organization to capitalize on them.”

Based upon this initial finding, the authors began to explore alternative leadership profiles. Here you are required “to think beyond the bounds of the company and focus on effective leadership acts they’ve observed outside the organization, in particular those that could have a strong impact if adopted by internal leaders at their level. Here fresh ideas emerge about what leaders could be doing but aren’t. This is not, however, about benchmarking against corporate icons; employees’ personal experiences are more likely to produce insights. Most of us have come across people in our lives who have had a disproportionately positive influence on us. It might be a sports coach, a schoolteacher, a scoutmaster, a grandparent, or a former boss. Whoever those role models are, it’s important to get interviewees to detail which acts and activities they believe would add real value for them if undertaken by their current leaders.”

The next step begins to take what I call some real corporate courage. It requires that middle and frontline managers critique what senior management has come up with in step 2, developing alternative leadership profiles. Some of the more interesting changes were ‘Cut through the Crap’ in which “frontline leaders did not defer the vast majority of customer queries to middle management and spent less time jumping through procedural hoops. Their time was directed to training frontline personnel to deliver on company promises on the spot” and to resolve problems. Another was ‘Liberate, Coach and Empower’ where leaders “time and attention shifted from controlling to supporting employees.” Finally, there was ‘Delegate and Chart the Company’s Future’ where the front and middle line managers had more responsibility so “senior managers would be freed up to devote a significant portion of their time to thinking about the big picture—the changes in the industry and their implications for strategy and the organization. They would spend less time putting out fires.”

‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ challenges companies to allow its employees to “think about which acts and activities leaders should do less of because they hold people back, and which activities they should do more of because they inspire people to give their all.” Just as you begin to think through the changes wrought by one action in a small town, very long ago, which changed the 20^th Century forever, you may wish to use these concepts to think about how your leadership can be made more effective.

In tomorrow’s post I will look at how the authors believe you can execute a ‘Blue Ocean Leadership’ change in your company.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

The Oath of the Tennis Court and How to Document, Document, and Document

I have an undergraduate degree in European History, French Revolution to the Present, which was then 1978. Perhaps not the most marketable of college degrees but for a lover of history it was a ton of fun. One of my favorite study subjects was the French Revolution, particularly the phase from 1789-1792; the period of almost Constitutional Monarchy, before the King was executed and the Terror set in. While this part of the Revolution failed, it does not mean that was not a noble effort by the French people, who had been inspired in large part by the success of our American Revolution.

In the spring of 1789, King Louis XVI, called the Estates-General into session. It was a national assembly that represented the three “estates” of the French people – the nobles, the clergy, and the commons. The Estates-General had not been assembled since 1614, and its deputies drew up long lists of grievances and called for sweeping political and social reforms.

The Third Estate, which had the most representatives, declared itself the National Assembly and took an oath to force a new constitution on the king. Initially seeming to yield, Louis legalized the National Assembly under the Third Estate but then surrounded Versailles with troops and dismissed Jacques Necker, a popular minister of state who had supported reforms. In response, Parisians mobilized and on July 14 stormed the Bastille, a state prison where they believed ammunition was stored, and the French Revolution began. On this date in 1789, one of the most dramatic events occurred; The Oath of the Tennis Court, where the deputies of the Third Estate, which represent commoners and the lower clergy, met on the Jeu de Paume, an indoor tennis court, in defiance of King Louis XVI’s order to disperse. In these modest surroundings, they took a historic oath not to disband until a new French constitution had been adopted.

The Oath of the Tennis Court was recorded for each member who took part. In other words, there was full documentation of who took the oath and the substance of the oath taken. It was a very good example of what I continue to hammer as the three most important things in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance, that being Document, Document, and Document. However, many people ask what that means more than simply writing something down.

I am currently attending the UL EduNeering Leadership Forum and there are several compliance representatives from the pharmaceutical industry in attendance. One thing I have learned is that the pharmaceutical industry has a definition of Good Documentation Practice (GDP), which describes standards by which documentation is created and maintained in the industry. Although the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sets some GDP standards, others fall under the Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP). Finally, all pharmaceutical, bioscience and healthcare companies, as well as their vendor partners, must observe GDP or face warnings or penalties levied by the FDA.

In an article by Barry Peters and Heather D. Ferrence, entitled “Importance of Implementing Good Documentation Practices”, they note that the World Health Organization (WHO) says the some of the purposes of GDP include:

• To define the specifications and procedures for all materials and methods of manufacture and control.
• To ensure that all personnel concerned with manufacturing know what to do and when to do it.
• To ensure that authorized persons have all the information necessary to decide whether or not to release a batch of a drug for sale.
• To ensure the existence of documented evidence, traceability and to provide records and an audit trail that will permit investigation.
• To ensure the availability of the data needed for validation, review and statistical analysis.

Moreover, “an essential part of all aspects related to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), adhering to GDP helps prevent errors within various processes, such as product quality and safety, state of manufacturing facilities and other related activities, and ensures that each company is following strict standard operating procedures (SOPs). In a regulated industry, such as pharmaceuticals, quality cannot be assured without accurate documents and GDP.” Finally, it is to be noted that “it is imperative that all documentation is concise, legible, accurate and traceable.”

Adapting the authors’ suggestions specific to the pharmaceutical industry, I submit the following for your consideration in your Document, Document, and Document practices in FCPA compliance:

• Lack of proper record keeping when documents are transferred from one department to another.
• Critical oversight regarding document issue, data collection and document review.
• Consistent labeling that includes identification codes and any document revision codes.
• Ensuring proper security and storage of documents during review process.
• Proper and consistent identification of all documents through all processes.
• Ensuring that all those whose signatures appear on the documents understand why they signed the documents as well as any and all responsibilities associated with the signing of the documents.

To the above list I would add some additional suggestions:

Document maintenance

• Regularly reviewed and kept current
• Retained and available for appropriate duration
• Electronic document management systems are validated
• Electronic records are backed up

Document modification

• Handwritten modifications are signed and dated
• Altered text is not obscured (e.g., no correction fluid)
• Where appropriate, the reason for alteration must be noted
• Controls exist to prevent the inadvertent use of superseded documents
• Electronic versions can only be modified by authorized personnel
• Access to electronic versions must be controlled by password or other means
• A history (audit trail) must be maintained of changes and deletions to electronic versions
• Supporting documents can be added to the original document as an attachment for clarification or recording data. Attachments should be referenced at least once within the original document. Ideally, each page of the attachment is clearly identified (i.e. labeled as “Attachment X”, “Page X of X”, signed and dated by person who attached it, etc.)

Setting and following good document practices is an essential aspect of compliance with federal regulations, such as the FDA, who governs large aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, and other federal laws such as the FCPA. So in addition to documenting your actions, you should also follow a written protocol for document maintenance and subsequent modifications.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been – The First 1000 Blog Posts

Yes, indeed the Grateful Dead can and does inform your compliance regime as today is my 1000^th blog posting on the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog. To say that I ever thought I would see this day or this many blog posts, would portend a level of clairvoyance that even Carnac the Great could not conceive of pontificating upon. I had struggled with a theme for this momentous accomplishment but my sublimely-grounded English wife brought me down from the ethereal clouds with the following suggestion, “Even an old dog can learn new tricks.” Nothing like being married to a younger woman.

So today, I want to write about some of the things I have learned on this 4+ year journey, which began in late 2009/early 2010 after a serious automobile/bicycle event (Box Score: Hummer-1 Tom-0) where about the only thing I had on my hands was time while I was at home convalescing. I started to explore the world of social media, engaging on Twitter, webinaring from my home office and blogging. I was so un-savvy in this arena that about the only positive thing my teenaged daughter could say about me was “Dad, you are so unhip, you are retro. But that is cool too.” The first thing I learned was that even a complete computer misfit and social media idiot could set up a blog on WordPress. It is not only easy but free. I cannot say with any pride that some of my early blogs were very good but I can say that for a lawyer, whose only skill was to be able to perform word processing in Microsoft Word, I could type and then upload a blog post into WordPress. At that point in my blogging career, that was a major accomplishment.

Although it did take some time, I learned how to stop writing like a lawyer, with full citations in each blog, coupled with as much lawyerese as I could manage, by finally adjusting to a blogging format. I also relearned an old lesson, which says that if you really want to learn about a subject, write on it. I remember one of the first things I learned when researching the Travel Act was that this Kennedy era law, passed largely through the efforts of Bobby Kennedy, was designed to help in the fight against organized crime. So who would say a 60 year old law cannot be used for a 21^st century purpose? Or maybe even a Watergate-era like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) could not have an expansive use, beyond that for which it was passed in 1977? I also learned that if you put out solid content people will read and listen to what you have to say.

I learned there are some great people out there blogging in the ethics and compliance space. I have met some fabulous colleagues through my blogging who have not only been incredibly supportive but whom I now cherish as good friends. Some of them include Mike Koehler, the FCPA Professor, for his scholarly rigor and continued intellectual challenges. Dick Cassin, the Dean of FCPA bloggers, for his unflinching support to myself and so many others. Mike Volkov, former prosecutor and DC-insider, who is always around to bounce a tough question off. Howard Sklar, who was my This Week in FCPA podcast partner, until we lost him to the corporate world. Francine McKenna, a great and generous mentor for myself and many others and the go-to person all issues in and around the accounting world. Jim McGrath, the internal investigations guy, who brings a former state prosecutor’s perspective to how investigations should be handled and critiqued. Matt Ellis, whose focus on and insights into South America (as in – it’s not a country) continue to shine a light on anti-corruption issues south of the border. Matt Kelly, Editor of Compliance Week, who saves some great witticisms for his weekly blog posts. These are but a very few of the folks I am now privileged to call friends because of my blogging.

I learned that there is way too much white noise in the FCPA space. The FCPA Professor calls them FCPA Inc. and Mike Volkov derides them as the FCPA paparazzi. Whatever you might call them, they put out reams and reams of information, sometimes useful but many times not. What I have tried to do is synthesize some of the most useful for the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance practitioner or anyone else who does the day-to-day work of anti-bribery/anti-corruption compliance. There are many, many things you can know but a far smaller subset of what you need to know. I try to bring to the compliance practitioner what they need to know. That is why the subtitle of my blog is ‘The Nuts and Bolts of FCPA Compliance’. I have tried to write about things which the compliance professional can use in the everyday practice of compliance.

I have learned that blog posts, which I thought were the most important, may turn out to be the least viewed blogs. Conversely, posts I did not think would be of great interest turned out to have the largest number of one-day hits. For instance, the largest single number of one-day hits I had was an article from two years ago about the SNC-Lavalin corruption investigation in Canada. [For a blog about FCPA compliance-go figure.] The second largest number was a recent blog post using the GM internal investigation as an exploration in the differences between a corporate legal function and its compliance function.

I have learned that by committing to something, you become much better at it. My first year of blogging, I tried to put out 2-3 blogs per week but beginning in 2011, I committed to a daily blog post. Once I made that commitment, blogging became a part of my workday. Once it became a part of my workday, it was like any other project or assignment. I had to set aside the time to work on it. It has made me a much more efficient and better writer to know that I need write something, during my workday. Yes there have been times I was up at 5 AM to write a post or stayed up way past my school-night bedtime trying to crank something out but those situations have become few and far between as I became more disciplined about my blogging.

But most of all I have learned that blogging is fun. It is fun because it is a challenge to write about something in an informative and engaging manner. It is fun to tie a Shakespeare play to a compliance and ethics theme. It is fun to read a week’s worth of Sherlock Holmes’ stories and tie a compliance topic to a story each day for one week. It is fun to find out what happened this day in history and use it as a hook to grab your readers’ attention. It is fun to engage in a debate with the FCPA Professor on a topic of mutual interest, where we look at the same thing, yet see it from different perspectives. And it is fun when you meet someone for the first time and after you introduce yourself, they say to you “When is a rose, not a rose? When it’s a FCPA violation”.

Where will the next 1000 blogs posts take me? I have no clue but if they are as much fun as the first 1000 posts have been I hope that you will continue to join my on This Long Strange Trip.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

SEC Sanctions Company for Whistleblower Retaliation

I drove my daughter to the airport today for her summer exchange program in Spain. On the way she asked me what I was going to blog about tomorrow and I told her whistleblowers. She was not familiar with that term so I explained it to her and her response was ‘Oh you mean a snitch’ which she then followed up with ‘Dad, nobody likes a tattletale.’ I digested these cheery thoughts for a few moments and I realized if that is what a 17 year old thinks about a person who tries to inform the appropriate parties of concerns, we still have quite a ways to go in this area.

In Compliance Week, Joe Mont reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought its first enforcement action for a company’s retaliation against a whistleblower. On Monday of this week, the SEC “charged an Albany, N.Y.-based hedge fund advisory firm with engaging in prohibited transactions and then seeking retribution against the employee who reported the illicit trading activity.”

The hedge fund in question, “Paradigm Capital Management and owner Candace King Weir agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle the charges. According to the SEC’s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding, Weir conducted transactions between Paradigm and a broker-dealer that she also owns while trading on behalf of a hedge fund client. Advisers are required to disclose that they are participating on both sides of the trade and must obtain the client’s consent. Paradigm also failed to provide effective written disclosure to the hedge fund and did not obtain its consent as required prior to the completion of each principal transaction. The SEC’s order adds that Paradigm’s Form ADV was materially misleading because it failed to disclose the CFO’s conflict as a member of the conflicts committee.”

Regarding the whistleblower, the SEC order reflected, “after Paradigm learned that the firm’s head trader had reported potential misconduct to the SEC, it engaged in a series of retaliatory actions that ultimately resulted in his resignation. Paradigm removed him from his head trader position, tasked him with investigating the very conduct he reported to the SEC, changed his job function from head trader to a full-time compliance assistant, stripped him of his supervisory responsibilities, and “otherwise marginalized him,” the order says.”

The Dodd-Frank Whistleblower provisions not only allowed payment of a bounty for information, which leads to a SEC enforcement action, but also protects employees from retaliation. Sean McKessy, chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, said in a statement “For whistleblowers to come forward, they must feel assured that they’re protected from retaliation and the law is on their side should it occur. We will continue to exercise our anti-retaliation authority in these and other types of situations where a whistleblower is wrongfully targeted for doing the right thing and reporting a possible securities law violation.”

The difficulties faced by whistleblowers on Wall Street have been well documented. In an article in the Financial Times (FT), entitled “Wall Street Whistleblowers”, William D. Cohen wrote about three such persons. Oliver Budde, a former legal advisor for Lehman Brothers, who was quoted as saying “When the tone at the top is ‘anything goes’ anything will go.” Eric Ben-Artzi, a former analyst at Deutsche Bank, who was quoted as saying “They accused me of trying to bring down the bank.” Peter Sivere, a former compliance officer at JP Morgan Chase, who was quoted as saying “I wish I had known that the house always wins.” All three men had tried to blow the whistle internally but were not only rebuffed but suffered retaliation.

For his article, Cohen interviewed the three men. He found that all of them had “made allegations of wrongdoing at their banks, made strenuous efforts to report what they had discovered through internal and external channels and all three were either fired from their jobs after trying to share the information they had stumbled upon or quit in frustration.” But, equally importantly, Cohen believes that their stories, “and the details of what happened to them are important. Not only do they illustrate the existential risks that whistleblowers take when they attempt to point out wrongdoing that they uncover at powerful institutions. They also matter because their stories show just how uninterested these institutions genuinely remain – despite the lip service of internal hotlines and support groups – in actually ferreting out bad behaviour.”

The article also quoted Jordan Thomas, a former SEC enforcement official now in private practice at the firm of Labaton Sucharow, where he heads the firm’s whistleblower practice. Thomas thinks that the anonymous reporting provisions of the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower provisions will help protect whistleblowers. He said, “Essentially most whistleblower horror stories start with retaliation and to be retaliated against, you have to be known. The genius of Dodd-Frank was it created a way for people with knowledge to report without disclosing their identity to their employers or the general public. That has been a game changer because now people with knowledge are coming forward with a lot to lose, but they have a mechanism where they can report this misconduct without fear of retaliation or blacklisting.” Thomas also said “the fact that the SEC could award $14m to a single whistleblower whose identity has remained unknown, despite efforts by the media to uncover it, sends a powerful message that whistleblower identities will be protected.”

One person who is uncomfortable with this anonymous reporting is Beatrice Edwards, director of the Government Accountability Project. She pointed to a recent SEC payout to an anonymous whistleblower, where “The SEC didn’t even reveal the nature of the wrongdoing the whistleblower uncovered, so both the company’s shareholders and the public remain in the dark about what was specifically uncovered and where. All that is known is that the SEC did bring a major enforcement action against a financial institution that resulted in a large penalty and the corresponding $14m award to the whistleblower.” Edwards argued that “the SEC is a disclosure agency, so they should have to establish that [not revealing the information] is really required in order to protect the whistleblower, if they’re going to in a sense subvert their mission . . . They really are not able to justify why they are silent about the name of the company or the nature of the fraud.”

Perhaps the SEC bounty program and the Paradigm Capital Management enforcement action will change the way that company’s view and treat whistleblowers. I certainly hope so because a company’s own employees are its best source of information about what is going on inside the company. As to my daughter’s perception about whistleblowers, I asked her if her school had any type of reporting system if a student saw or was subject to inappropriate behavior. She said that you are supposed to report it to a school counselor. When I explained that was a whistleblower system she relented somewhat. But then she added, No one should rat out their friends. Just like the SEC, I guess we have a ways to go.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

Watergate is Not Just a Hotel – Corporate Suitors for Alstom

Today is the anniversary of an event that can truly be said to have changed the world; although certainly not in the manner intended by its planners, sponsors or participants. Today is the anniversary of the 1972 Watergate Break-In. How much of the world has changed because of this event? We certainly would not have had Jimmy Carter as the US President and most probably would not have had the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) passed into law during his administration. Would Ronald Reagan have become President four years earlier in 1976 rather than 1980? Who knows, but, if yes, would the Soviet Union have collapsed sooner under the weight of his military buildup? What about the fall of the Shah and the taking of the US hostages, think Reagan would have had a more ‘robust’ response than Carter? All tantalizing questions for those interested in the great What Ifs of history.

Over the weekend, I read that the long shuttered Watergate complex is scheduled to be torn down to make way for a more modern office edifice in its most desirable of Washington DC locations. This reminded me of one of my favorite Watergate era slogans “And Watergate was not just a hotel!” Indeed it was not just a building, rather an entire mindset of a presidency that went seriously off the rails.

Interestingly I found a parallel to this slogan when reading about the overtures by General Electric (GE), then Siemens and also Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to purchase some or all of the French company Alstom. These offers are in spite of Alstom’s very public current anti-corruption issues, in several countries. Mike Volkov, in a blog post entitled “Alstom: The Next Poster Child for Anti-Corruption Enforcement”, said “In our FCPA world, we have a new poster child for blundering – Alstom. The handwriting is on the wall – as time goes on, the Justice Department is building a bigger and bigger FCPA case against Alstom. One of my favorite Dylan lyrics applies with full force – “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Further, “Clearly we have a case where the client company just does not understand what is going on, nor does senior leadership have the ability or desire to respond and fix the problems. Instead, Alstom’s failure to act and respond reflects the lack of any ethical culture. That in a nutshell is probably 90 percent of the reason that a culture of bribery took over the company.” Pretty strong stuff.

Four senior executives have been charged for FCPA violations around one project. The FCPA Professor reported, “The conduct at issue concerned the Tarahan coal-fired steam power plant project in Indonesia.” All were charged around the same set of facts. They are alleged to have paid bribes to officials in Indonesia, including a member of Indonesian Parliament and high-ranking members of Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), the state-owned and state-controlled electricity company, in exchange for those officials’ assistance in securing a contract for the company to provide power-related services for the citizens of Indonesia, known as the Tarahan project.” Two of the four Alstom executives have pled guilty to FCPA violations.

Over the weekend, the Financial Times (FT) reported, in an article by Caroline Binham, entitled “UK prosecutors press on with Alstom probe”, that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been given permission by the UK attorney-general to prosecute both the company and former employees for allegations of overseas bribery. The SFO “has also notified seven individuals but is considering whether to prosecute them after they were interviewed with the assistance of French authorities, people familiar with the investigation told the Financial Times…Among those who received letters from the SFO are the company’s former senior vice-president of ethics and compliance, Jean-Daniel Lainé, and three Britons who formerly held senior management positions: Graham Hall, Robert Hallett and Nicholas Reynolds.” All of the individuals identified in the FT article do not appear to have been a part of the Indonesia power project, which appears to form the basis of the FCPA charges here in the US.

So why such high level suitors for a company of which Volkov has opined, “It is an important reminder of how bad a company’s culture can become and the consequences of embracing a culture of lawlessness versus a culture of ethics and integrity.” What about all that ‘Springing Liability’ for which both Siemens and GE might be liable for if they are successful in purchasing some or all of Alstom that the US Chamber of Commerce and others rail about? I think that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) answered these questions in the FCPA Guidance when they stated, “companies that conduct effective FCPA due diligence on their acquisition targets are able to evaluate more accurately each target’s value and negotiate for the costs of the bribery to be borne by the target. In addition, such actions demonstrate to DOJ and SEC a company’s commitment to compliance and are taken into account when evaluating any potential enforcement action.” But pre-acquisition work is only one part of the equation, as the FCPA Guidance goes on to state, “FCPA due diligence, however, is normally only a portion of the compliance process for mergers and acquisitions. DOJ and SEC evaluate whether the acquiring company promptly incorporated the acquired company into all of its internal controls, including its compliance program.Companies should consider training new employees, reevaluating third parties under company standards, and, where appropriate, conducting audits on new business units.”

One thing that GE and Siemens have in common are world-class compliance programs. Siemens was the subject of the highest FCPA fine ever at $800MM back in 2008. Since that time, it has successfully concluded a robust monitorship under the terms of its Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA). Siemens compliance representatives regularly speak at compliance related events and discuss not only the company’s commitment to anti-corruption compliance but they also detail how compliance is done at Siemens. GE is well known for having its compliance folks regularly speak at conferences about the details of its compliance regime. In other words, both companies’ have very public robust compliance regimes in place and most probably follow, at a minimum, the parameters set out in the FCPA Guidance.

Just as “And Watergate is not just a hotel!”; Springing Liability is not a warranted fear under the FCPA. The FCPA Guidance makes clear the steps a company should engage in under the FCPA to avoid liability in a mergers and acquisition (M&A) context. The steps are not only relatively straightforward; they are good business steps to take. If you do not know what you are looking to acquire, it is certainly hard to evaluate it properly and then to integrate it efficiently.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. 

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014