Steering Clear of DOJ’s Most Likely to Be Caught List

Why Should You Attend:

The Department of Justice is targeting small to medium-sized businesses covering a wide range of compliance issues and increasing their scrutiny in 2015. No small business is too small. In 2014 alone, the DOJ announced a record $5.69 billion in settlements and judgments stemming from investigations under the False Claims Act (FCA) alone. They promise to continue and widen the scope of their efforts.

If you are an owner, you cannot make any more excuses that you didn’t know what employees or distributors were doing on your behalf. Neither can you assume no one would question that your ski house and beach house or multi-week time shares were being used by your customers more than you. This is a full-court press by the major world justice departments, including ours, to root out corrupt business practices at businesses of every size. If you are doing business with any company headquartered in the UK, the scrutiny will be even greater.

Even with a written compliance plan, without showing how it’s implemented, how often, and proving that it is ongoing is grounds for a significant fine, at the least.

This webinar, in 90 minutes, will enumerate to attendees what they need to know, what they have to do, and what is considered basic. The fact is, if you do not have a compliance program in place that lives and breathes along with you, there are not many places you can run and hide in today’s networked world.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• State of Department of Justice compliance investigations 2014/15
• What is a compliance program and what does it cover?
• What is not considered part of a legal compliance program
• How a compliance program should be covered and implemented
• Examples of how compliance programs are successfully extended to outside business partners
• What compliance programs help accomplish and avoid
• Contents of a solid (general) compliance program
• What is a code of conduct and how it should be written into a compliance program
• Internal reporting of violations – simplicity, confidentiality, no reprisals
• Who needs to be listed as contacts in a compliance code book for employees
• Discussion of what’s difference between code and ethics, who must be covered
• Meaning and handling of confidential information
• Insider trading policy – how it can affect your private company
• LinkedIn and expert advisor networks – how to cover in compliance program
• Importance of accurate communications – oral, paper, Internet
• Retention and altering of documents
• Confidentiality
• Separating compliance code from HR rules
• Protection and use of your and other’s intellectual property
• Environmental health and safety as part of a compliance program
• Conflicts of interests
• Critical personnel policies that must be part of a compliance program and code
• Cooperation in federal or state investigations
• Wrap up of key issues
• Important government websites on compliance, import, export, FCPA, and others
• Sample forms

Handouts

Templates for a base compliance program and code of conduct will be part of the training program.

Who Will Benefit:

Any privately-owned business without a written, up-to-date compliance program that must include general codes of conduct and those that are industry specific and demonstrable, on-going training program for all employees and management.

These businesses include high-volume restaurants, independent grocery chains, specialty food companies, nutraceutical companies, small pharmaceutical companies, independent laboratories, grant-receiving organizations, professional corporations, medical and dental groups, transportation companies, finance companies, any defined small business doing contractual work with the US Government, Foreign Governments, NGO’s, in regulated industries. Companies with a sales force, using brokers or distributors, having manufacturing facilities or using contract manufacturing. Companies involved in importing or exporting.

• Privately-owned businesses and professional services companies with revenues of $300k to $300mm
• Business owners and partners
• Vendors
• Suppliers
• Bookkeepers
• Sales Managers
• Office Managers
• Controllers
• Comptrollers
• Pharmacists
• Physicians
• Nurse Practitioners
• Chiropractors
• Purchasing
• Import and Export
• Marketing and production managers of any manufacturing or distribution companies
• Storage, sales (including online), or warehousing facilities
• Medical offices

Instructor Profile:

Harry Falber

Harry Falber is an international executive with a successful career as both a general manager/president and consultant. He has worked with both public companies and family-run businesses including Hallmark Cards (where, as president, he led the turn-around of the e-commerce unit, hallmarkflowers.com), Smith & Wesson, Nabisco Brands (imported beer), Gerber Infant & Baby, CP Kelco-Asia Pacific, Reynolds Consumer Products, Nat Sherman Tobacconists, Baco Consumer Products, 1800Flowers.com, and Polaroid Corporation, among others.

Mr. Falber has led innovation and licensing initiatives, developed compliance standards, engineered corporate and brand rehabilitation, product line repackaging and strategic turn-arounds, executed market and competitive intelligence assignments, holds design patents and has uncovered weaknesses in patents. He has worked throughout Asia, Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada, and the US.

His company, Trade Area Marketing Group, and he personally, have been providing both domestic and international clients with interim hands-on management; development and implementation of strategic alternatives for unforeseen competitive situations, sourcing international manufacturing suppliers and conducting on-site inspections of suppliers to assure adherence to global compliance standards and practices. Along with legal counsel, TAMG and its partners create and train in new compliance programs that are industry specific. Recently TAMG received authorization to be advisors to client companies by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, assisting their clients in developing businesses in open and democratic market economies.

Mr. Falber has created urgently needed advertising, promotion, and sales programs and he and his partner help advertisers select creative, digital and media agencies, arrive at compensation programs unique to the creative and media space, as well as advise financial institutions targeting advertising agency investment businesses. They also advise agency principals on selling, merging, and exit strategies.

Joe Dell’Aquila

Joe Dell’Aquila is one of the two general partners of Trade Area Marketing Group, LLC - a globally positioned consulting practice. Mr. Dell’Aquila, his partner, and their colleagues provide hands-on assistance to senior management and all levels of their organizations including the design and implementation of quick-to-launch response strategies, new ad agency searches, negotiation of ad agency compensation, audits, and cost containment of marcomm expenditures. Having recognized the growing global focus on anti-corruption, anti-terrorism, and universal product and food safety, they developed a focused, consulting division offering compliance program development, training, and audits to satisfy critical anti-corruption, and safety oversight important in conducting domestic and international trade.

Mr. Dell’Aquila works with clients in developing strategies for growth and turn-arounds as well as providing tactical support for a broad range of sales, marketing, supply, innovation, and general management initiatives. He and his partner work with private and public businesses, distributors, local, regional and international government officials, and non-governmental organizations, as needed, when unforeseen situations arise, which often include creating quickly needed advertising, promotion, and sales programs.

Before merging his business with TAMG, Mr. Dell’Aquila co-founded Continental Consulting Group where he conducted over 50 new ad agency searches as well as structured numerous compensation agreements for clients and agencies alike. In late 2005, he expanded into the M&A space where he worked with major agencies, strategic acquirers, and private equity groups. In late 2011, he handled the $120 million+ sale of The D.L. Ryan Companies to Lake Capital.

Mr. Dell’Aquila has extensive advertising experience as a senior ad agency executive and as a client. His agency account management experience includes heading up the M&M Mars worldwide confectionery business at Bates Worldwide as well as British Airways and Dole Foods. He was a Bates executive vice president, and member of the global board of directors.

In his dealings with international advertising assignments, he has developed a familiarity with national regulation and compliance ranging from acceptable advertising content on a national basis, restrictions on earned currency within national borders to human resource issues which are substantially different from region to region and country to country. Mr. Dell’Aquila holds a BA in comparative literature from Manhattan College, and an MBA from Columbia University.

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