President Obama today signed into law the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA), a bill that extensively ramps up anti-fraud measures, including authorizing new funding to fight fraud, adding protections to federal whistle-blowers and expanding the power of
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Sarbanes-Oxley’s ever expanding sphere of influence grew further in April when the Department of Labor ruled that private companies that perform work for public companies will now held accountable under SOX.
The ruling came after a complaint was filed with OSHA by an in-house attorney who worked for a publicly traded company (the attorney’s name and [...]
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In March, the FBI’s Chicago field office arrested a 52-year-old former employee of Valspar Corp, and charged him with theft of company secrets. The former employee, David Yen Lee of Arlington Heights, Ill., faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Valspar was tipped off to the theft after Lee [...]
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Employees of the Virginia Department of Health Professions received an unwelcome surprise in February, when an anonymous hacker changed the organization’s homepage to a virtual ransom note.
According to the online note, the hacker claimed to have stolen 8.3 million patients’ personal information in Virginia, deleted any back up files of the information and demanded $10 [...]
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A former Department of Energy employee pleaded guilty to one count of false statements, after the Department of Justice accused him of writing his own annual review. He did so, according to news reports, in order to justify an annual performance award that he also managed to give himself.
According to the DOJ, no individual [...]
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In April, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered investigations into Liechtenstein bank accounts used by Michelin, Total and Adidas as tax havens. The move, intended to coincide with the recent G20 agreement to curb international tax shelters, began four months ago and was focused on accounts held by subsidiaries of the large companies.
Michelin and Total [...]
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Dan Amos, CEO of Aflac, is already famous for implementing say-on-pay measures within his company (Read his thoughts on say-on-pay in the Quarter 4 issue of Ethisphere Magazine). Other companies now seem to be warming up to the idea as well. Both Intel and Hewlett-Packard have acknowledged that they would be willing to take up [...]
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Many companies have come under scrutiny for their head-scratching behavior amidst the financial downturn, specifically those that lay-off thousands of employees while their leadership accepts ever increasing, multi-million dollar bonuses. At the same time, however, there are many companies that haven’t made as dramatic of headlines for the way their leadership has voluntarily given up [...]
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If you hadn’t heard by now, around 20 percent of our planet’s greenhouse-gas emissions come from cow “emissions.” Cadbury has decided to tackle this challenge head on and encourage cows to burp less in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the company’s chocolate products.
Experts say that nearly two-thirds of all carbon emissions involved in [...]
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Kyle Foggo, who previously held the number 3 spot at the CIA from 2004 to 2006 was sentenced to three years after pleading guilty to one count of fraud. According to the New York Times, Foggo is the highest ranking CIA official to ever be convicted of a crime.
Prosecutors say that Foggo would accept tens [...]
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A federal judge doubled the verdict awarded to an employee who was found to have been fired in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act. The employee, Melissa Brown, said that she was fired because she told her employers at Nutrition Management that she was pregnant.
According to Scott Murray, Nutrition Management’s Human Resources [...]
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The Veterans Affairs Department agreed to a $20 million settlement yesterday, after concerns of identity theft arose from a 2006 case of a lost laptop and external hard drive. A VA analyst admitted to losing the laptop, which contained the names, birth dates and social security numbers of over 26 million veterans and
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A federal appellate court ruled today that Taco Bell, and not its ad agency TBWA, is responsible for the $42 million payment to the original creators of the now famous Taco Bell Chihuahua mascot.
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Earlier this month, Governor Bill Richardson decided to withdraw his nomination for commerce secretary in order to, in his explanation, avoid making a spectacle out of the confirmation process. The unnecessary distraction, he feared, would come about
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It’s well known that during times of financial hardship, crime goes up. So no one should be surprised that corporate crime goes up during a recession.
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“I am both saddened and outraged,” Steve Schwarzman wrote in a message to Blackstone employees on Tuesday. “The SEC has brought a civil complaint today against Ramesh Chakrapani in our Corporate Advisory Services Group.”
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Team of Rivals? Not Quite. In response to a series of 2007 FTC antitrust suits, Whole Foods has asked 96 of its U.S.-based competitors to hand over sensitive company data. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, believes the information will help fight the 29 separate lawsuits it is facing – one for
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In 2007 a Code of Conduct for transparency and disclosure was drawn up for the private equity industry in the United Kingdom. It was created, and still remains, as a voluntary code that firms can agree to sign onto at their leisure. Unfortunately, even after signing up voluntarily, many firms didn’t fully comply
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The Department of Justice announced last week that it filed a forfeiture action against approximately $3 million in accounts held in Singapore. The DOJ alleges that this money was used to pay off officials in Bangladesh. The kicker is that some
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A great piece in the Wall Street Journal today discusses the dedicated efforts of a Mr. Harry Markopolos in trying to alert the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Bernard Madoff ponzi scheme as early as 2000.
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The following information comes courtesy of David Laufman at Kelley Drye:
On Friday, a new mandatory disclosure rule took effect that dramatically alters the legal dynamic between government contractors and federal agencies.
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Regular Ethisphere readers are aware of a number of issues that have affected Johnson & Johnson in the past, namely the (still ongoing) problems with their Ortho Evra birth control patch. Along those lines, Bloomberg published an interesting story claiming that Johnson & Johnson has paid - at a minimum - $68.7 million in [...]
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An amusing story in the Times Online this week reports that uber-advertising company WPP and its former Italian director, Marco Benatti, have privately settled an ongoing dispute involving libel, wrongful termination and interoffice romance.
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Two journalists who were arrested last May after reporting on corruption within the Vietnamese government are set to go on trial next week. The two reporters, Nguyen Van Hai and Nguyen Viet Chien, are charged with “abusing freedom and democracy,”
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The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it had levied the fourth largest fine against a cartel in the history of the EU. This time, it came out to €676 million and went against the wax industry.
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