Daily Compliance News: July 22, 2025, The I-9 Hell Edition
10 For 10: Top Compliance Stories For the Week Ending July 19, 2025
Sittenfeld v. United States – Campaign Contributions as Crimes?
Podcast - Walking Tall
Podcast - The Seeds of Corruption
The Dark Patterns Behind Corporate Scandals
10 For 10: Top Compliance Stories For the Week Ending June 21, 2025
Daily Compliance News: June 19, 2025, The Corruption in Spain Edition
Daily Compliance News: June 9, 2025, The Repugnant Edition
Daily Compliance News: June 6, 2025, The Good Punishment Edition
Daily Compliance News: May 28, 2025, The Moron Premium Edition
10 For 10: Top Compliance Stories For the Week Ending May 24, 2025
SBR-Author’s Podcast: The Unseen Life of an Undercover Agent: A Conversation with Charlie Spillers
Daily Compliance News: May 21, 2025, The I Want You Back Edition
Daily Compliance News: May 20, 2025, The What Could Go Wrong Edition
Daily Compliance News: May 19, 2025, The Definition of Corruption Edition
Compliance into the Weeds: Leaving on a (Qatari) Jet Plane
The Presumption of Innocence Podcast: Episode 61 - A Call to Service: From Public Duty to Spiritual Advocacy
Daily Compliance News: May 12, 2025, The Corruption in the Broad Daylight Edition
As in every year, in 2024 the grinches of law enforcement brought financial and corporal misery to bad guys in energy. Here is a review of the crimes of only a few of the convicted, admitted and alleged bribsters, swindlers...more
Trafigura’s bribery scheme resembles the same schemes implemented by its significant competitors — Vitol, Glencore, Gunvor. At the core of the conduct, Petrobras and Brazilian government officials collected bribes in...more
We conclude our exploration of the resolution of the FCPA enforcement action involving the Swiss trading firm G Trafigura Beheer B.V. (Trafigura), an international commodity trading company with its primary operations in...more
We continue our exploration of the resolution of the FCPA enforcement action involving the Swiss trading firm trading firm G Trafigura Beheer B.V. (Trafigura), an international commodity trading company with its primary...more
We continue our exploration of the resolution of the FCPA enforcement action involving the Swiss trading firm G Trafigura Beheer B.V. (Trafigura), an international commodity trading company with its primary operations in...more
We continue our exploration of the resolution of the FCPA enforcement action involving the Swiss trading firm Gunvor S.A. The enforcement action came in with a $661 million penalty against the company, which has pleaded...more
In March 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the resolution of a FCPA enforcement action involving the Swiss trading firm Gunvor S.A. The enforcement action comes in with a $661 million penalty against the...more
Following an 8 week trial, a federal jury in Brooklyn has convicted Javier Aguilar on charges relating to the former Vitol trader’s violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He faces up to 30 years in prison. Aguilar...more
Last week, Albemarle Corporation (Albemarle), agreed to pay more than $218 million to resolve investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into violations of the...more
The Albemarle FCPA enforcement action was announced at a good time. This year has been a slow year for DOJ’s FCPA enforcement program, although there are several months before the end of the year. The SEC, on the other hand,...more
Albemarle’s bribery schemes look and sound like text-book examples of third-party agents being paid high commissions as a way to funnel bribery payments to foreign officials at state-owned oil refineries. However, as usual,...more
Albemarle Corporation (Albemarle), a specialty chemicals manufacturing company located in Charlotte, North Carolina, agreed to pay more than $218 million to settle FCPA investigations with DOJ and the SEC stemming from...more
Franks International (“Frank’s”) settled FCPA charges with the SEC for $8 million stemming from operations in Angola during the period 2008 to 2014. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Frank’s for the same events....more
In its first enforcement action of 2023, the Justice Department charged a Connecticut man and a foreign national with FCPA bribery and money laundering charges stemming from a bribery scheme to secure contracts with Petrobras...more
We all know and hear about third-party risks – over and over again. Despite this recurring theme, organizations continue to pay the price for failing to address third-party issues. It does not take a rocket scientist to...more
FCPA settlement actions often underscore specific compliance risks for legal and compliance professionals. If there ever was a case where third-party risks were bungled, and even intentionally embraced, the Foster Wheeler...more
The Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission are back in business. The first corporate FCPA enforcement action in 2021 came after a six-month hiatus in 2021. While many commentators sought to read the...more
Raymond Kohut, a 68-year old Canadian citizen, a former employee of Swiss commodities trader, Gunvor Group, Ltd., pleaded guilty to paying $22 million in bribes to Ecuadoran government officials at state-owned oil company,...more
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) recently announced the settlement of its first enforcement action involving foreign corruption. In December 2020, the CFTC issued a Consent Order, finding that Houston-based...more
In a coordinated enforcement action with the DOJ, the CFTC filed and simultaneously settled charges against Vitol Inc., the U.S. affiliate of one of the world’s largest energy trading firms. ...more
The Justice Department is coming to the close of a record FCPA enforcement year despite the disruptions caused by the pandemic. The Vitol case also represents the first parallel prosecution involving the Commodities Futures...more
The Justice Department continues to produce FCPA resolutions in a record year for enforcement. The latest, and perhaps the beginning of several end-of-year and end of the Trump Administration resolutions, is DOJ’s settlement...more
The Google antitrust waiting game wrapped on Tuesday with the DOJ filing a federal D.C.-based lawsuit against the Alphabet unit, accusing the company “of using several exclusive business contacts and agreements to lock out...more
A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of New York returned an indictment against Javier Aguilar, an oil trader at Vitol, an energy and commodity trading company, for his role in a five-year international bribery and...more