Category Archives: Legal

Для тех, кто интересуется безопасным доступом к онлайн-играм, наш партнер предлагает зеркало Вавады, которое позволяет обходить любые блокировки и сохранять доступ ко всем функциям казино.

Risk Link Roundup

Posted on by

Link Roundup

Here are a few recent articles that highlight issues impacting the world of risk and insurance, including blogs and articles about FIFA corruption, whistleblower programs—both pro and con—and the supply chain in outer space.

Iran, Russia Reject Idea of Joint Oil Output Cuts with Saudi Arabia
Reuters: Oil-producing countries looked unlikely to reach a deal to lift languishing prices at a meeting on Friday after Iran, Iraq and Russia swiftly rejected a surprise proposal that appeared to have been floated by Saudi Arabia.

16 Additional FIFA Officials Indicted for Racketeering Conspiracy and Corruption
U.S. Department of Justice: A 92-count superseding indictment was unsealed earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging an additional 16 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offenses, in connection with their participation in a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves through the corruption of international soccer.

Are Whistleblower Reward Programs Really a Good Idea?
FCPA Blog: Since the start of the SEC whistleblower program in 2011, the agency has awarded $54 million to 22 whistleblowers “who provided the SEC with unique and useful information that contributed to a successful enforcement action.”

Yes, We Need Whistleblower Rewards
FCPA Blog: Congress could not have been any clearer in its statutory design. Nor the SEC any more outspoken in its revitalized approach to government enforcement. Whistleblower rewards work.

Supply Chain Challenges in Space Exploration
OPS Rules Blog: Space supply chains are low demand and highly schedule driven. This might seem to be in contrast to commercial supply chains, which deal with high volume and compressed lead times. But applying the principles governing the commercial fast paced supply chains to the space supply chain can make it more agile and cost efficient.

Avoid Corruption in Holiday Gift-Giving

Posted on by

With Thanksgiving and the holiday season upon us, gift-giving and compliance can be an issue for global companies, especially since more than 20% polled by Deloitte said their companies don’t assess the corruption risk of employee gift-giving.

While 20.4% of respondents don’t assess employee gift-giving corruption risk, more than 43.4% expect anti-corruption enforcement to rise in 2016, moneyaccording to a recent Deloitte poll of more than 1,600 professionals.

“As generous as the holidays make many feel, giving gifts that could be seen as bribes to non-U.S. government officials can result in fines, regulatory action and brand damage for multinational organizations,” said Bill Pollard, Deloitte Advisory partner at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. “Now is the time to conduct gift-giving compliance training and increase efforts to help ensure anti-corruption compliance through the holiday season. As global enforcement continues to increase, take a note from regulators and make sure your corporate records around travel, gifts and entertainment are transparent and show no ‘corrupt intent’—particularly when out-of-country government officials are recipients.”

The poll results found that anti-corruption policies for giving gifts to non-U.S. government officials run the gamut: 18.2% maintain a no-gift policy and provide no gifts to customers, 16.4% give only small company logo items, 15.7% restrict gift value and 6.1% use separate policies for non-U.S. government officials compared to other customers and third parties.

Holiday gift giving-1

The poll also found that 43.6% of companies plan to make improvements, while 12.7% do not and 43.7% do not know.

To uncover irregularities that point to corrupt intent and bribes disguised as gift-giving, some compliance, legal and internal audit teams use visualization and analytics tools. However, just 8.4% of respondents said their organizations effectively use visualization and data analytics technologies to support anti-corruption efforts. A full third of them (33.1%) didn’t use the tools at all.

Holiday gift giving-2

Leading practices to prevent and detect corruption in gift-giving include:

  • Set ground rules clearly — Describe the nature and type of acceptable gifts, payments, travel and entertainment. Escalate all gifts for government officials to compliance for review. Create an approval process with aggregate dollar limits. Define the disciplinary process for non-compliance.
  • Act globally — Ensure that rules are consistent not only with U.S. laws but local laws and customs. Translate that guidance into all appropriate languages in which your organization operates.
  • Keep gifts corporate — Give gifts that feature company logos, reflect the organization’s products and ensure they are intended for official — not personal — use (such as a business card holder).
  • Make gifting inclusive — Give gifts publicly and transparently, and involve teams as opposed to individuals (such as specialty baked goods for a team to share)
  • Prohibit cash or its equivalents, such as gift cards.

“Anti-corruption visualization and analytics tools can help address varied global anti-corruption laws and gift-giving customs, making multi-national anti-corruption management easier than before,” Pollard noted. “Nothing replaces the fundamental value strong anti-corruption professionals, policies and procedures do.”

Marijuana’s Cost to Employers

Posted on by

With the adoption of more state laws to legalize marijuana, employers will face challenges to protect their employees from injury and to comply with federal requirements to maintain a drug-free workplace.

Employers also face potentially costly litigation as case law surrounding legal marijuana develops, according to the Quest Diagnostics whitepaper “What Will ‘Legal’ Marijuana Cost Employers?”

Marijuana-workplace

Quest reports that medical marijuana legalization brought forth a new phenomenon: the production of marijuana-infused foods and gadgets, which presents a special problem for employers. Today, nearly half of marijuana users in states where it is legal consume marijuana by eating it rather than smoking it. In addition, vape pens, which are like e-cigarettes but contain capsules of concentrated marijuana oils, leave no marijuana smell and are impossible to tell apart from e-cigarettes. These two modes of consumption will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for employers to tell when employees are using marijuana on the job.

As marijuana use increases, so will workplace injuries, accidents, mistakes, and employee illnesses, escalating the costs of companies’ liability, workers’ compensation and health insurance.

Questions companies should ask include:

  • Will employers have to accommodate marijuana use in their workplaces? A closely watched case. Before the Colorado Supreme Court will establish, at least in Colorado, whether employees can use marijuana off the clock even if they may be impaired the next day.
    buy tenormin online www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/png/tenormin.html no prescription pharmacy

  • Must employers pay for employees’ medical marijuana if they are injured on the job? By allowing a court of appeals decision to stand, the New Mexico Supreme Court finds that the answer is yes.
  • Will the use of legal cannabinoids like delta 8 THC be allowed in the workplace?
  • What does increased adolescent marijuana use portend for the future workforce? Research shows that compared to nonusers, teens who smoke marijuana on weekends over a two-year period are six times more likely to drop out of high school, three times less likely to enter college, and four times less likely to earn a college degree?
  • How can employers meet federal requirements to maintain a drug-free workplace if states require proof of impairment rather than the presence of marijuana in the body when no level of impairment has been scientifically established and no noninvasive test to denote impairment has been developed?
  • If courts hold that drug testing is no longer a valid indicator of impairment, how can employers whose businesses involve driving or other safety-sensitive positions protect their workers and the public from injuries and deaths cause by stoned drivers?
  • What if courts hold that failing a pre-employment drug test is no longer a valid reason to deny employment to applicants?

There are, however, steps employers can take to protect themselves:

1) Stay up-to-date with the changing legal landscape and adjust workplace policies accordingly.

2) Remember that marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

3) Join other employers to monitor state legislation and take action with legislators to ensure workplace protections are included in any marijuana laws.

4) Educate your workforce about the dangers marijuana poses to children, families and the workplace.

buy seroquel online www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/png/seroquel.html no prescription pharmacy

5) Challenge the notion that marijuana is medicine, or risk paying for it in your health insurance program. No marijuana medicines being sold in states that legalized them have been approved by FDA as pure, safe, or effective.

buy phenergan online www.methanol.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/png/phenergan.html no prescription pharmacy

Doctors cannot prescribe them and pharmacies cannot sell them.

Prosecutors Reveal ‘Securities Fraud on Cyber Steroids’

Posted on by

The investigation into a huge cyberattack on JP Morgan Chase last year has exposed one of the largest computer hacking and fraud schemes to date.

online pharmacy periactin with best prices today in the USA

According to U.S. prosecutors, Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein, all from Israel, hacked a total of 12 companies to expose the personal information of more than 100 million people, netting hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. The men face 23 criminal counts, including wire fraud, computer hacking, illegal internet gambling and money laundering, with alleged crimes targeting 12 companies, including nine financial services companies and media outlets including the Wall Street Journal. Investigators say their massive criminal empire used 75 shell companies that employed hundreds of people, and hacked seven major banks, ran an online casino, laundered money around the world and set up an illegal Bitcoin trading operation.

online pharmacy zestril with best prices today in the USA

“It is hacking in support of a diversified criminal conglomerate,” said Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. “In short, it is hacking as a business model.”

In addition to the hack of JP Morgan, which U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called “the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution” and exposed the personal information of 83 million customers, the criminals also attacked E*Trade Financial Corp., TD Ameritrade, Scottrade Inc., Fidelity Investments and News Corp’s Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal. The breaches date as far back as 2007.

“By any measure, the data breaches at these firms were breathtaking in scope and in size,” Bharara said. “This showcases a brave new world of hacking for profit.”

Breaking into these financial institutions gave the attackers information to target specific people, and gave them extra insight into the stock market. According to the indictment, they used the customer data to contact individuals and push them to buy stocks in order to manipulate their prices. In addition to the pump-and-dump scheme, sometimes the defendants reportedly engineered mergers with shell companies to create publicly traded stocks that could be manipulated.

online pharmacy symbicort with best prices today in the USA

Bharara called the scheme “securities fraud on cyber steroids.”

Beginning in 2012, in addition to disguising payments and constantly obtaining new bank accounts, the men further tried to evade detection by hacking into a company that assessed merchant risk for credit-card issuers. The breach allowed the defendants to read employees’ emails and figure out how to sidestep the company’s efforts to monitor illegal payments, according to the indictment.

The defendants are also accused of operating at least 12 illegal internet casinos, even launching cyberattacks against rival gambling businesses to review executives’ email and gain a competitive edge. Shalon hacked competitors’ customer databases and directed denial of service attacks to shut down their businesses.

Several compliance officers may soon feel the heat as well: the investigation found that, in operating the online casinos and illegal pharmaceutical payment processing enterprises, the co-conspirators deceived financial institutions into processing and authorizing payments between the casino companies and others. “They colluded with corrupt international bank officials who willfully ignored its criminal nature in order to profit from, as a co-conspirator described it to Shalon, their payment processing ‘casino/software/pharmaceutical cocktail’,” the indictment charges.

According to prosecutors, the case illustrates the growing power of criminals and their tools, and makes such crimes particularly difficult to solve. But it may also highlight one key resource to do so: self-reporting to law enforcement. Officials credited JP Morgan’s early cooperation for helping to uncover the network of criminal activity. The firm came forward early on to share information with the government, a move many forensic investigators encourage.
buy prednisone online https://galenapharm.com/pharmacy/prednisone.html no prescription

This case provides one of the clearest examples of why: hackers frequently use the same schemes to target a swath of companies in a given industry. While many companies worry about the reputational and regulatory risks of disclosing a breach to law enforcement, as hackers grow more sophisticated in their techniques and complex in their operations, it may prove an ever more critical step in the breach response and investigation process.

“Shalon, Aaron, and their co-conspirators allegedly robbed victim companies, often for months at a time, stealing the contact information of tens of millions of customers,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Diego Rodriguez. “They cloaked themselves in secrecy, but their methods rivaled those of the traditional masked robber. Today’s indictment sheds light on an increasingly complex threat. But just as criminals continue to develop relationships with one another in order to advance their objectives, the law enforcement community has developed a collaborative approach to fighting these types of crimes.”