What They Said

The best part of what we do here is working with people from every corner of the compliance community. This past year, for example, our bylined contributors — all experts in their fields — brought new ideas, solid scholarship, and a fresh perspective about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its enforcement.

Here’s what we mean.

In just the past month, we heard from Tom Fox on his favorite enforcement actions of 2010. His post, if you hadn’t noticed, doubles as a rich compliance resource.

Jeff Kaplan expounded a theory of liability based on Potemkin compliance programs — a prophetic warning if ever we’ve heard one.

Joe Looby’s generous post about U.S. / EU cross-border discovery and privacy laws was about a real-world problem that’s troubling a big segment of the compliance community.

Professor Andy Spalding, as usual, weighed in with some big ideas. His latest post, “The Nobel Prize For Graft,” painted a chilling picture of a world divided into countries pushing compliance, and those pushing something else.

TI-USA’s Nancy Boswell and Shruti Shah talked about the rise of corruption in the U.S. It’s not a popular subject, but we all need to hear about it.

That’s December. Looking back a bit further, former prosecutor James McGrath wrote about the dangers of the DOJ being an investigatory partner. He called the government’s first-call demand a “seismic shift,” and he backed that with concrete reasons.

Rob Walton and Shruti Shah from TI-USA revealed the SEC’s dilemma with whistleblowers — incentivizing and protecting them without undermining corporate compliance programs. Can it be done?

Markus Funk and Caryn Lara Trombino talked about improving the FCPA and preserving America’s leadership role in the global battle against corruption. Their post previewed two big topics for 2011.

First-time contributor Kyle Sheahan had the audacity to say how useless the FCPA’s two affirmative defenses are. Then he argued a credible case for his position. When the dust starting flying, Kyle kept his cool and elevated the discussion. What more can anyone do?

Remember Bruce Hinchey’s unforgettable posts this year? Based on original quantitative research, he questioned the DOJ’s claim that there are tangible benefits to voluntary disclosure of an FCPA violation. You didn’t need to understand linear regression analysis to know Bruce was on to something big.

So, those are some (but not all) of 2010’s bylined authors. We hope they’ll all be back here next year. And of course the door is always open to new contributors.