As reported here, Matt Galvin, Anheuser-Busch InBev SA’s former global compliance chief, will join the Justice Department’s fraud section next week.
As stated in the article, “Mr. Galvin is best known among corporate compliance professionals for spearheading the development at AB InBev of a cutting-edge analytics platform that analyzes troves of corporate data to identify risky business partners and suspect payments.”
According to the article:
There is very little in common with COVID vaccination rates and FCPA compliance – except that the government encourages both.
Yet in one instance, the government provides meaningful incentives to induce action and in the other instance the government does not.
As to COVID vaccinations, states are offering the following incentives to encourage more people to get vaccinated: lotteries, scholarships, pre-paid grocery cards, fishing and hunting licenses, passes to state parks, even custom hunting rifles and shotguns. Several states are automatically entering people who have been vaccinated into lotteries that pay out $1 million or more.
The FCPA Flash podcast provides in an audio format the same fresh, candid, and informed commentary about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and related topics as readers have come to expect from written posts on FCPA Professor.
This FCPA Flash episode is a conversation with Matthew Galvin (Global Vice President, Ethics & Compliance at AB-InBev). During the podcast, Galvin talks about the company’s BrewRight compliance system including: the origins of BrewRight; what BrewRight is; and how it minimizes FCPA (and other) risk. Galvin also discusses whether companies that adopt similar compliance systems should be able to avail themselves of a “compliance defense.”
The OECD recently released this study titled “Corporate Anti-corruption Compliance Drivers, Mechanisms and Ideas for Change.” The study largely relies on results of a survey “to better understand the extent to which companies are currently motivated to take measures to prevent and detect bribery and other forms of corruption in their business dealings.”
The survey size was very small (only 130 survey respondents – largely individuals in a legal or compliance role in their companies – with the U.S. having the most respondents – with the largest number of respondents in the healthcare industry). As a result the survey was not representative as even the report recognized: “a company that does not have a compliance program probably would not have an interest in participating in a study of such program – thus it is important to remember that the percentage of respondents who indicated that their companies have such a program is not at all indicative of the percentage of overall companies in the world that have such programs.”
Even as to this survey group, as highlighted below several survey responses caught my eye and call into question whether “soft” enforcement of the FCPA (and related laws) has been successful (see here for the article “Has the FCPA Been Successful in Achieving Its Objectives”) or whether compliance can best be incentivized with a compliance defense (see here for the article “Revisiting an FCPA Compliance Defense”).
In response to COVID-19, in May 2020 President Trump signed Executive Order 13924 titled “Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery.”
Section 1 stated in pertinent part: “it is the policy of the United States to combat the economic consequences of COVID-19 with the same vigor and resourcefulness with which the fight against COVID-19 itself has been waged.” Among other things, Executive Departments and Agencies (such as the Securities and Exchange Commission) were directed to commit to “fairness in administrative enforcement and adjudication.”
The Executive Order authorized the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue guidance implementing the order which the OMB recently did in this memo. The OMB’s list of “best practices” include the following that are relevant to the SEC’s enforcement of the FCPA.
