FCPAméricas Blog
The Changing Role of the General Counsel … in Latin America?
3.15.2013
A recent Harvard Business Review article entitled “The Rise of the General Counsel” discusses how the role, status, and importance of a company’s general counsel has changed in the United States. It calls this “one of the most important developments of the last 25 years.”
The article discusses how the GC is now a core member of a company’s top management team. The GC offers advice, not just about legal issues, but about business ones as well. This is because businesses now possess so much risk. The article suggests that the GC has an essential role to play in assessing and managing that risk. It asserts that the GC is “now often the go-to counselor for the CEO and the board on law, ethics, public policy, corporate citizenship, and country and geopolitical risk.”
Does this observation hold true in Latin America too? As the FCPA begins to affect Latin American companies, and as Latin American companies begin to embrace compliance strategies, is the role of the GC adapting to keep up? FCPAméricas asked four prominent lawyers in the region to provide their thoughts:
ARGENTINA (Maximiliano D’Auro, Estudio Beccar Varela... Read more
Connecting the Dots: Latin America Examples of Common FCPA Accounting Violations
3.12.2013
FCPAméricas has seen a spike in readership from Latin America, suggesting that regional businesspeople and companies are increasingly seeking to understand the FCPA.
Since we believe that having relatable examples is useful for new readers and for practitioners tasked with spreading the message to different audiences, this post seeks to ground discussions of common FCPA risks in real-world examples of enforcement in Latin America. In an earlier post, we offered example of anti-bribery violations. In this post, we offer common examples of accounting violations:
ACCOUNTING PROVISIONS. The accounting provisions require U.S. and foreign companies registered on any U.S. securities exchange to make and keep books and records in reasonable detail to accurately and fairly reflect transactions and disbursements of the company’s assets and to devise and maintain a system of internal accounting controls that ensures transactions are executed in accordance with management’s authorization. The FCPA Guidance offers helpful insight into the ac... Read more
Connecting the Dots: Latin America Examples of Common FCPA Anti-Bribery Violations
3.08.2013
FCPAméricas has seen a spike in readership from Latin America suggesting that regional businesspeople and companies are increasingly seeking to understand the FCPA.
Since we believe that having relatable examples is useful for new readers and for practitioners tasked with spreading the message to different audiences, this post seeks to ground discussions of common FCPA risks in real-world examples of enforcement in Latin America. Given that there are two essential components to the law, the Anti-Bribery Provisions and the Accounting Provisions, we offer common examples of each in a series of two posts. This post focuses on Anti-Bribery violations. Another post focuses on accounting violations.
ANTI-BRIBERY PROVISIONS. The anti-bribery provisions make it illegal for foreign persons acting in the United States or U.S. companies or individuals acting anywhere in the world to give or promise to give anything of value to a foreign official, directly or indirectly, to obtain or retain business or gain an unfair advantage.
Government Contracts: Payments to win a government contract or avo... Read more
