60 years of lobbying have helped corporations shape policy in multiple arenas.

In 1962, Milton Friedman said “There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Read The Article

Accurate and timely financial reporting is critical for businesses. It provides a clear and concise picture of a business’s financial health, helping executives to make informed decisions and maintain the trust of investors, lenders, and other stakeholders by promoting transparency. By seeing exactly where money is being spent and potentially wasted, focus can be turned to more profitable endeavors. Not only does transparency build trust with those currently invested in a company, but it can also increase a business’s access to additional funding through banks and other lenders by showing a good financial investment opportunity, especially for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Read The Article

On January 17, 2023, Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Kenneth Polite, Jr. announced updates to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Corporate Enforcement Policy. Since the inception of the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy in 2017, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been “rewarding companies that do the right thing when learning about possible misconduct.” Now, DOJ has further incentivized disclosure of FCPA misconduct and full and willing cooperation with an investigation. With a voluntary disclosure, full cooperation, timely and appropriate remediation, and full disgorgement, entities may be able to receive a declination of prosecution and greatly reduced sentencing, even when there are aggravating circumstances.

Read The Article

As regulators review audit independence requirements to figure out whether the rules should be changed in order to promote auditor objectivity and skepticism, a recent academic study points to a negative incentive system that may impair independence and bring down audit quality. The study found that audit firms “are significantly more likely to remove” a partner from a continuing engagement when the partner issued an adverse internal control opinion in the previous year. Such problem is tied to the client-pay audit model, which critics say produces inherent conflicts of interest.

Read The Article

The former National Treasurer of Venezuela and her husband were each sentenced today to 15 years in prison for their roles in a multibillion-dollar bribery and money laundering scheme. According to court documents, Claudia Patricia Díaz Guillen, 49, and her husband, Adrian José Velásquez, 43, accepted and laundered over $136 million in bribes from co-conspirator Raúl Gorrin Belisario, a Venezuelan billionaire businessman who owned Globovision news network. Gorrin allegedly paid bribes to Díaz, including through Velásquez, to obtain access to purchase bonds from the Venezuela National Treasury at a favorable exchange rate, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profit. The conspiracy involved bulk cash hidden in cardboard boxes, offshore shell companies, Swiss bank accounts, and international wire transfers allegedly sent by Gorrin for Díaz and Velásquez’s benefit, including to purchase multiple private jets and yachts, and to fund a high-end fashion line started by Díaz and Velásquez in South Florida. 

Read The News Release

On March 30th, 2023, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) released supplemental guidance for using the globally recognized 2013 COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework (ICIF) to achieve effective internal control over sustainability reporting (ICSR). In COSO’s press release on the new guidance, COSO Chair Lucia Wind notes that “This new supplemental guidance is significant and extremely timely given upcoming final rules on climate risk from the SEC and ISSB, not to mention the journey organizations are on to build sustainable management principles into their core mission, purpose, governance, and strategies.”² Douglas Hileman, FSA, CRMA, P.E., a co-author of the new supplemental guidance notes, “Many groups provide data and information for Sustainability reporting – Environmental, HR, Operations, Procurement, Real Estate. The document is designed to foster communication and collaboration between those who know internal controls and those who don’t.”

Read The Call to Action

California-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed last month, making it the biggest lender to go down after the global crisis of 2007-08. The speed at which a bank with assets of over $200 billion went down is alarming and raises several questions, including about flaws in the US’s banking architecture. SVB collapse has once again spotlighted the question of who should be held responsible in the event of a corporate failure. In such cases, statutory auditors are easy targets, as they are the ones who sign off on a company’s accounts and are required to give an appraisal of the firm’s ability to survive the year ahead. 

Read The Article

Designed for busy in-house counsel, compliance professionals, and anti-corruption lawyers, this newsletter summarizes some of the most important international anti-corruption law and enforcement developments from the past month, with links to primary resources. This month we ask: Which companies resolved Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) allegations with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)? Why was cryptocurrency executive Samuel Bankman-Fried charged with violating the FCPA? How will new and revised policies from DOJ’s Criminal Division impact FCPA enforcement? The answers to these questions and more are here in our March 2023 Top 10.

See the Top Ten List

Mitigating the risk of fraud

jamaica-gleaner.com

April 23, 2023

IF YOU operate a small enterprise in Jamaica, there are two very compelling reasons that make proactively mitigating the risk of fraud an urgent priority for 2023 and the foreseeable future. The first is that historically, small businesses have always been more vulnerable to internal and external fraud and theft than large enterprises, regardless of where in the world they are domiciled. This is because by nature, small businesses often lack the financial resources, expertise, manpower, infrastructure, and processes to implement and sustain robust internal controls and anti-fraud measures that effectively prevent or mitigate the risk of loss from fraud and pilfering.

Read The Article

Contact: Mr Nereo Guzman Mendoza

Email: nguzman@businesssolutionvalley.com

Tel: +52 811 181 3514

Control Quotes:

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. -Benjamin Franklin