There's a new tool in the compliance officer's toolbox. And not only is it free, it also answers one of the most common questions asked by those who have to update company compliance policies: What is everyone else doing? >>
A Texas attorney has gathered 489 publicly available corporate codes of conduct, and they are now searchable through the website of the Ethisphere Institute, a compliance and ethics think tank. >>
Even with an apology and an insistence he has no idea what happened to missing client money, MF Global's former chief Jon Corzine cannot distance himself from the mess at the bankrupt futures brokerage.
Corzine testified to Congress on Thursday about the chaotic final days of MF Global, defying some predictions that he would refuse to answer questions...
"It is far from clear if anyone did anything intentionally wrong at MF Global," said
David Siegal, a former federal prosecutor who is a white-collar defense lawyer with Haynes and Boone in New York. >>
A company's code of conduct sends a strong message to employees and federal investigators, alike—whether it's clear and instructive, full of ambiguities, or altogether void of certain policies. >>
Say you’re an in-house lawyer developing a compliance policy on gifts and hospitality for an oil and gas company. Or maybe you’re in private practice and helping a telecommunications company implement a whistleblower hotline.
Where do you turn for a benchmark?
On Tuesday, the business ethics think tank [The Ethisphere Institute] rolled out a new online database that compiles the codes of conduct and policies from the 500 largest corporations by revenue into a searchable dataset. Access to the database, which was created in partnership with attorneys
Ryan D. McConnell, Katharine Southard and Charlotte Simon, is free. >>
On Monday December 19, 2011, the Department of Justice announced year-end results for False Claims Act (“FCA”) cases in fiscal year 2011. The results demonstrate a dramatic increase in FCA cases brought by the government and private whistleblowers. >>
For most companies, employees represent the most valuable asset. They make the products companies sell. They run the business. >>
The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently held that a complaint does not need to meet the heightened pleading standards for fraud claims in order to satisfy the first-to-file rule under the False Claims Act (“FCA”). >>