What you'll learn in this podcast episode

Over the last few years, federal regulators have provided detailed guidance on what they expect to see in E&C programs when it comes to misconduct inquiries or investigations. What do these recent reports, policies, and guidance mean for compliance professionals? In this episode of the Principled Podcast, LRN Director of Thought Leadership and Best Practices Susan Divers is joined by Jon Drimmer, a partner at the law firm Paul Hastings. Listen in as the two discuss the recent guidance from the US Department of Justice as well as DOJ policy impacting corporate compliance programs and ethical culture.   

 

Featured guest: Jon Drimmer

Jonathan C. Drimmer is a partner in the Investigations and White Collar Defense practice and is based in the Washington, D.C. office of Paul Hastings. He resolves complex cross-border problems with the benefit of having sat in every chair at the table: senior legal officer for a global 500 company, federal prosecutor, and seasoned advocate. He is a recognized international expert on anti­corruption and business and human rights, and is a frequent speaker, author, and commentator on issues related to both topics.

Before joining Paul Hastings, he was Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of Barrick Gold, one of the world’s largest mining companies, with operations on five continents. The compliance program he built at Barrick has served as an industry standard, and elements of it have largely been duplicated by numerous other companies inside and outside of the extractive sector.

Mr. Drimmer has directed hundreds of investigations around the world related to anti-corruption, human rights, AML and export controls, tax controversies, environmental incidents, public disclosures, fatalities and health and safety injuries, sexual harassment and discrimination, and other areas. He has represented companies and individuals in numerous government enforcement proceedings in the U.S. and overseas, in relation to FCPA and bribery claims, human rights issues, and a wide array of other matters. He has participated in dozens of major disputes in the U.S., Canada, and abroad, including transnational torts, anti-corruption claims, environmental cases, international arbitrations, tax disputes, construction claims, and land controversies.

He previously served in the Justice Department as Deputy Director of the Criminal Division’s Office of Special Investigations, where he led cross-border investigations, first-chaired numerous prosecutions, and argued federal appeals. He was a partner at an Am Law 100 law firm in Washington, D.C., a former Bristow Fellow in the Office of the U.S. Solicitor General, and a judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Drimmer served on the board of directors of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights Initiative from 2012-2014, and again from 2015-2017. He served on the board of TRACE International from 2012 until 2018, and currently sits on the board of the TRACE Foundation. He has also taught international law courses at Georgetown University Law Center for nearly 20 years.

 
Featured Host: Susan Divers

Susan Divers is the director of thought leadership and best practices with LRN Corporation. She brings 30+ years’ accomplishments and experience in the ethics and compliance arena to LRN clients and colleagues. This expertise includes building state-of-the-art compliance programs infused with values, designing user-friendly means of engaging and informing employees, fostering an embedded culture of compliance, and sharing substantial subject matter expertise in anti-corruption, export controls, sanctions, and other key areas of compliance.

Prior to joining LRN, Mrs. Divers served as AECOM’s Assistant General for Global Ethics & Compliance and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer. Under her leadership, AECOM’s ethics and compliance program garnered six external awards in recognition of its effectiveness and Mrs. Divers’ thought leadership in the ethics field. In 2011, Mrs. Divers received the AECOM CEO Award of Excellence, which recognized her work in advancing the company’s ethics and compliance program.

Before joining AECOM, she worked at SAIC and Lockheed Martin in the international compliance area. Prior to that, she was a partner with the DC office of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal. She also spent four years in London and is qualified as a Solicitor to the High Court of England and Wales, practicing in the international arena with the law firms of Theodore Goddard & Co. and Herbert Smith & Co. She also served as an attorney in the Office of the Legal Advisor at the Department of State and was a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN working on the first anti-corruption multilateral treaty initiative. 

Mrs. Divers is a member of the DC Bar and a graduate of Trinity College, Washington D.C. and of the National Law Center of George Washington University. In 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 Ethisphere Magazine listed her as one the “Attorneys Who Matter” in the ethics & compliance area. She is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Rutgers University Center for Ethical Behavior and served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Practical Training from 2005-2008. She resides in Northern Virginia and is a frequent speaker, writer and commentator on ethics and compliance topics. 

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast, brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Susan Divers:  Good afternoon. From time to time, but particularly in the last few years, federal regulators have provided detailed guidance on what they expect to see in ethics and compliance programs when companies present them as a defense to misconduct inquiries or investigations. What do the recent flurry of reports, policies and guidance mean for compliance professionals? How should they be applied to improve E and C programs?

Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host, Susan Divers, director of thought leadership and best practices at LRN. And today, I'm joined by Jon Drimmer, a partner at the international law firm of Paul Hastings. We're going to talk about the recent DOJ guidance and policy impacting corporate compliance programs and ethical culture, and hopefully help everyone understand what it is and how they should apply it to their programs. Jon is a real expert, as well as a friend in this space. He has the unusual distinction of serving in three of the principal seats that affect ethics and compliance, once as a federal prosecutor at DOJ, another time as a chief ethics and compliance officer and deputy general council for a large mining company, and now as an ethics and compliance advocate with a leading law firm. Jon, thanks so much for joining me at Principled Podcast.

Jon Drimmer: Thanks, Susan. It's great to be with you.

Susan Divers: Super. Well, let's jump right in. Last week, we saw a new policy come out of the Department of Justice that both Lisa Monaco and also Ken Polite have talked about with great emphasis. We've also seen the report come out of the sentencing commission about their 30 years of accomplishments. And we've also seen some major guidance in the last two years. Can you put it in perspective for us and talk about how it fits together, and how they interplay. And then we can jump in and start figuring out what they mean.

Jon Drimmer: Yeah. No, happy to do it. So let me take each one in sequence. So what we saw come down from the deputy attorney general was a new policy memo. And in essence, what that means is policies are, they are the rules that apply to federal prosecutors and prosecuting entities around the country. They are the standards that are going to be applied. Guidance, which is something that we see come out in a number of different ways through formal guidance as well as through statements and speeches and other informal approaches, this is basically how those rules are interpreted, how prosecutors should be thinking about the application of those policies as they're applied to any given circumstance. And then finally, reports, and you mentioned the sentencing commission's 30 year look back, those are more general. And they do tend to come out for transparency purpose, they're often retrospective, like the sentencing commission report. But they generally talk about how these rules have been applied. So policies are the rules, the guidance effectively aids in their interpretation, and the reports generally are a bit of a look back as to how they have been applied to date.

Susan Divers: That's really helpful. It really helps me put all of those in perspective. Talk a little bit more than about the policies and the guidance. Are they mandatory? Are they voluntary?

Jon Drimmer: Well, for prosecutors, they're mandatory. So when you look at the policies, this is effectively how prosecutors are to approach any given situation. It is a directive to them in terms of how it is they should go about doing their jobs. And I'll tell you it's critical. It's critical for chief compliance officers to understand those types of initiatives, those types of emphases. It's critical to prosecutors as well, as they get that direction in terms of what they should be focusing on. So really, it's a very important part of the process and helping to shape how investigations are run and scoped from the government's end, and what can be expected on the company side as well for chief complianc