All About Monitors

If you ever have had a question about monitors in the FCPA enforcement context, chances are it is addressed in "Somebody's Watching Me: FCPA Monitorships and How They Can Work Better." (See here).

Authored by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher attorneys Joseph Warin (here), Michael Diamant (here), and Veronica Root (here), the article was recently published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business.

Below is an abstract.

"This article explores the rise of the corporate compliance monitor as a condition for settling violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”)—a setting in which federal prosecutors routinely impose monitors. From 2004 to 2010, more than 40 percent of all companies that resolved an FCPA investigation with the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) or Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) through a settlement or plea agreement retained an independent compliance monitor as a condition of that agreement."

"If U.S. enforcement authorities maintain their current approach, the reality is that companies facing liability for violating the FCPA are likely to have a monitor imposed on them as part of a settlement agreement. From the U.S. government’s perspective, monitorships make sense for companies that violate anti-bribery laws, making it important for offending corporations to learn how to deal with monitors. Pulling from the authors’ extensive experience with three major FCPA compliance monitorships, as well as their work assisting clients operating under an FCPA monitorship, this article aids in that process. It also hopes to help monitors themselves, as well as the prosecutors who appoint them, in making the monitorship a more constructive feature of an FCPA settlement."

"Part I provides some basic background on the FCPA and discusses the use of compliance monitors as a term in settlement agreements with federal regulators. Part II examines why some companies receive a monitor as a term of an FCPA settlement, while others do not. Part III discusses what FCPA monitorships most commonly entail. Part IV identifies best practices for FCPA compliance monitors: what they should and should not do in their quest to help mold an ethical organization. Finally, Part V advises how companies can utilize their role in the selection, retention, and management of the monitor to help make the process anodyne and the results valuable for the organization."

For more on monitors, see here, here, and here (discussing a November 2009 GAO report) for certain prior posts.