Aaron Murphy Discusses with MCC Whether the DOJ and SEC Are Becoming More Aggressive

Akin Gump litigation partner Aaron Murphy was interviewed by The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel in its article “Are We Seeing A More Aggressive DOJ And SEC?” 

Murphy, whose practice focuses on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance counseling and investigations, discussed a wide range of issues related to anticorruption matters, including:

• The key elements of a good compliance program: “[N]umber one…is that companies have to have a top-level commitment to compliance. If the board and senior management are not totally committed to compliance (both in terms of sending the right messages to the organization and in terms of funding the program), then there is no way for a program to be successful.”
• The Department of Justice’s guidelines on self-reporting: “I think that the guidance that was issued by the Justice Department was a very good thing for the government to do. It’s useful, but its use is more in terms of creating a very clear set of policy statements that compliance officers and companies can use to indicate this is the way Justice views the world, and this is the issue they are focused on.”
• The biggest challenges in preparing a multinational for an FCPA investigation: “The biggest difficulty is getting management to understand how big the scope of the inquiry is likely to be. Many are not prepared and don’t always understand the manner in which these investigations need to proceed. Unlike civil litigation issues, corruption matters are often dynamic, real-time problems. What you know at the beginning of an investigation is often very different from what you know at the end.”

To read the full interview, please click here.