The large percentage of Germans that regularly avoid taxes isn’t terribly surprising, considering the nation’s top income tax rate is 45 percent and the tax laws are notoriously confusing, according to Bloomberg. Nevertheless, the problem is huge for the country and getting worse. The issue is making a lot of headlines right now, [...]

One day you’re labeled the “best health-insurance chief financial officer for each of the past four years” by Institutional Investor, the next you’re frantically texting “ABORT!!” to one of your many girlfriends/fiancees, hoping that your double life isn’t discovered. Such is the life of ex-Wellpoint CFO David Colby. Colby allegedly carried on relationships [...]

conradblack.jpgConvicted of defrauding Hollinger International last July, Canadian-turned-British media mogul Conrad Black was sentenced yesterday to six and a half years in prison, fined $125,000 and forced to forfeit $6.1 million dollars. Mr. Black, aka Lord Black of Crossharbour, was allowed to keep his Florida home despite prosecutors’ requests to the

William McGuire, former CEO of United Health, agreed to give back about $620 million to resolve a government investigation into whether or not he illegally backdated millions of stock options. Sure, this is a hefty sum, but the blow is softened when considering McGuire still floated home with a billion dollar golden parachute, even [...]

Stolt-Nielsen’s amnesty has been reinstated and the company’s Chief Executive, Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen, is “pleased” that he doesn’t have to go to jail – a fate suffered by three top brass of the company’s co-conspirators in a 2002 antitrust case. This is the latest (and final?) development in an ongoing case of “he said, [...]

The former chief financial officer of Safenet Inc. pleaded guilty on Friday to backdating stock options for herself and the former CEO.

The former director of San Telmo Energy was fined $20,000 and suspended from ‘trading and directorships’ after failing to report $3.4 million worth of insider trading. According to the British Columbia Securities Commission, Stubos neglected to file reports for 191 transactions of securities for San Telmo Energy. He was director of the company [...]

As reported by local Denver media, Colorado’s top federal judge likes to party.
Now the FBI is involved, and so are allegations of violations of the Judicial Code of Conduct.
Without getting into the sordid details, recently filed court documents show Colorado’s top federal judge, Judge Edward Nottingham, was too drunk to remember how he spent [...]

The extremely popular investment website, the Motley Fool, just ran a large profile about the positive ethics and governance of Sun Microsystems. This piece ran on the heels of a much-better-than-expected earning report. To excerpt…
The company just reported stellar earnings, befitting its astronomical business name, wherein management bragged a little bit about [...]

Qualcomm Inc. announced today the resignation of General Counsel Lou Lupin. Lupin had been known for his aggressive “take no prisoners” approach. Carol Lam, a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, was named his interim successor. Analysts are thinking that in pushing Lupin out [...]

After a five-week trial, former Brocade CEO Gregory L. Reyes was convicted by a federal court jury on 10 counts of conspiracy and fraud over illegal stock option backdating.
Mr. Reyes had been accused of intentionally changing the grant dates for hundreds of stock option awards without disclosing the move to investors. Sentencing is scheduled [...]

The Senate Finance and Judiciary committees have released the results of their investigation into the SEC’s firing of a former staff lawyer, Gary Aguirre, in September 2005.
Mr. Aguirre had been leading the SEC investigation into possible illegal insider trading by large hedge fund Pequot Capital that is run by Arthur J. Samberg.
Aguirre was fired after [...]

Six weeks ago, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $5.5 million in damages in a Florida lawsuit over a defective pain-killing patch that resulted in the death of a Florida man. While initially the company looked like it would appeal the judgment, they instead tried to settle it quietly for $2.5 million.
An excerpt [...]

Ryan Brant, the former CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software (maker of popular video games such as “Grand Theft Auto”), has been sentenced to five years of probation for his role in overseeing the fraudulent backdating of stock options.
Mr. Brant pleaded guilty in back February. He had been facing up to four years in prison [...]

The CEO of Commerce Bancorp, Vernon W. Hill, is out of a job today.
Mr. Hill, founder of the company, was pushed out by the very same board of directors that he had hand-picked to serve over the years (we reviewed Commerce’s code of conduct in the last issue of Ethisphere Magazine by the way [...]

Online virtual worlds like “Second Life” continue to grow at a rapid clip. Commerce, business meetings, and other far racier ‘encounters’ are becoming more commonplace in these virtual worlds.
To help protect its reputation, IBM announced this week that it was establishing a code of conduct to govern its more than 5,000 employees who [...]

As Financial Week is reporting, a new study is about to be released that links positive stock ratings by Wall Street analysts to the number of “favors” received by such analysts from the execs of the companies that they cover.
The upcoming study was co-authored by professors James Westphal of the University of Michigan and Michael [...]

Swiss-based engineering group ABB announced this week that it may have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) anti-bribery law after discovering suspect payments made by some employees overseas.
ABB said the probe is uncovering payments of concern made in Asia, South America, and Europe (with a particular focus on Italy).
The company disclosed that it [...]

Today, in a Denver courtroom packed with former US West and Qwest employees who lost their savings in the bankruptcy of the company, a federal judge sentenced the former chief executive who presided over the company’s demise to six years in prison.
Judge Edward Nottingham also ordered the ex-CEO, Joseph Nacchio, to pay a $19 [...]

This past Friday a federal jury convicted media tycoon Conrad Black and three of his former executives at Hollinger International Inc. of fraud. At issue was whether he illegally pocketed money that should have gone to stockholders. Allegedly when Hollinger sold off newspaper assets, Black illegally diverted millions of dollars in “non-compete [...]

Does anyone need further proof that the private and personal lives of CEOs are now fair game and are being intertwined into discussions around compliance, ethics and governance?
Okay then, here you go…
First of all, CNBC is reporting this morning that Jimmy Cayne, the CEO of Bear Stearns, is being investigated…
Investigated for what? Fraud? Insider [...]

Chile’s securities regulator has fined former presidential candidate Sebastian Pinera US$680,000 for conducting illegal insider trading of the airline stock LAN Airlines SA.
At issue was that Mr. Pinera, a Board of Director member of the company, bought the airline’s stock just a few days before a strong earnings report in July of last year. [...]

Office Depot is feeling the heat surrounding its recent warning to investors that sales were down due to a weak economy. The problem? It seems that some Wall Street analysts were privy to the information a week earlier.
According to the analysts, the warning they received from the Office Depot Investor Relations Department re-emphasized earlier alerts [...]

From our “in-case-you-missed-it-while-out-on-your- holidays-during-July” file the DOJ announced gleefully that four former executives with computer networking and security vendor Enterasys Networks Inc. had been sentenced to long prison terms for their roles in accounting fraud at the company.
The executives were originally convicted on conspiracy and fraud charges during a December 2006 trial.
In U.S. District Court [...]

The SEC filed lawsuits against five former executives of Veritas Software on the grounds that they each played a role in an accounting fraud, itentionally manipulating the company’s financial performance over the course of three years. While the former controllers of the company will pay $278,000 to settle the allegations against them, three of [...]