Yesterday I began a two-part series on the Department of Justice (DOJ’s) “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs” (Evaluation) posted on the Fraud Section in February. The document is an 11-part list of questions which encapsulates the DOJ’s most current thinking on what constitutes a best practices compliance program. Within the list are some 46 different questions that a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance practitioner can use to benchmark a compliance program. In short, it is an incredibly valuable and most significantly useful resource for every compliance practitioner.

Three Key Takeaways

1. This DOJ Evaluation provides clear guidance on the expectations of government regulators regarding what your program should consist of, how it should be effected and where you need to go down the road. It is also a valuable teaching tool as you can lay out for your Board and senior management the clear requirements for any best practices compliance program.
2. The document also re-emphasizes that you should listen when the DOJ communicate their expectations around compliance. Beginning with the initial public remarks of Hui Chen and comments by former Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell in November 2015, through the announcement of the FCPA Pilot Program in April 2016 and subsequent public remarks by Caldwell, Sally Yates and Daniel Kahn, the DOJ has consistently articulated the need for the operationalization of a corporate compliance program. Indeed, one can draw a straight-line from Caldwell’s November 2015 remarks at the SIFMA Compliance and Legal Society New York Regional Seminar where she presented the requirements to operationalize compliance in discussing compliance program metrics.
3. Any company which simply puts a paper program in place, whether it is certified or not, and then sits back on its collective hands, is in for a very rude awakening if it comes before the DOJ in an investigation or enforcement action. For it is in operationalization of your compliance program that the DOJ will give credit to a functioning compliance program.

 This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Oversight Systems, Inc. Oversight’s automated transaction monitoring solution, Insights On Demand for FCPA, operationalizes your compliance program. For more information, go to OversightSystems.com.

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