Tyson, the biggest U.S. food processor (TSN), avoided prosecution by paying $5.2 million and admitting it made improper payments to government-employed inspectors. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, began an internal probe in 2005, shut it down and didn’t disclose the matter to regulators and prosecutors until late last year, after learning the New York Times was investigating, the paper said.

The U.S. offers leniency to companies like Tyson that self- report. Yet many choose to remain quiet, calculating that they will cooperate with the government if it uncovers their bribery. Companies root out their wrongdoing and improve their compliance programs, assuming that any credit the government gives them for self-reporting is not worth the fines and penalties and negative publicity that follow disclosure.

via Wal-Mart Not Alone in Late Disclosure of Bribe Probe – Businessweek.

To collect the responses, ElcomSoft was running a questionnaire during the last few months. After gathering a statistically significant sample, the company discovered interesting information about its customers’ habits and preferences in regards to IT security.

Less than 50% of all respondents come from Computer Law, Educational, Financial, Forensics, Government, Military and Scientific organizations.

Less than 30% of respondents indicated they have never forgotten a password. Most frequently quoted reasons for losing a password to a resource would be infrequent use of a resource (28%), not writing it down (16%), returning from a vacation (13%).

Only about 25% of all respondents indicated they change their passwords regularly. The rest will either change their passwords infrequently (24%), sporadically or almost never.

via Users don’t bother changing default passwords.

Agenda

Speakers

Pricing

Conducting E-Discovery When the Federal Government is a Party

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM ET

via Conducting E-Discovery When the Federal Government is a Party.

via Proposed Whistleblower Provision Could Dramatically Increase FCPA Risk | Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP – JDSupra.

Last week, the state’s Superior Court system — which handles civil and criminal cases along with business lawsuits — established a division designed specifically to give corporate litigants a more focused, predictable forum.

The stakes of upholding — and when possible, improving — the nation’s perceptions of Delaware courts are huge. Yet there is some evidence that big corporate lawsuits are already going elsewhere, and that Delaware’s dominant status is slowly slipping away — possibly for good.

Without that reputation, the state is at risk of losing the big firms that incorporate here and help fuel the economy with millions in tax revenue, observers say. Others doubt Delaware is in any real peril, and have faith that the high standards of its judges and the depth of its case law will continue to outclass any other jurisdiction.

But that doesn’t mean the people who operate Delaware’s system never question the status quo.

Over the years, Delaware has repeatedly tweaked its system to keep pace with the needs of litigants — with more success in some cases than in others.

There’s a recognition here that when they’re able, big companies will “shop” for jurisdictions that offer advantages — litigants want a court that is knowledgeable, reliable, and efficient enough to avoid long, expensive proceedings.

via Delaware courts evolve to meet litigants’ needs | delawareonline.com | The News Journal.

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The proposed amendment to the state secrets law, reported Tuesday by the state news media, defines a state secret broadly and loosely as information that, if disclosed, would damage China’s security or interests in political, economic, defense and other realms.

The amendment was submitted Monday to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, for a third reading, the final step before being signed into law. Few measures reach that point in China without being adopted.

The wording of the amendment, as cited by the state-controlled newspaper China Daily, suggested that Internet and telecommunications companies would have to take a more proactive stance in identifying leaks of state secrets and their sources. The paper said companies must detect, report and delete unauthorized disclosures.

But reports by the state-run news agency Xinhua seemed less definitive about whether the companies must independently scour online transmissions for forbidden information or simply cooperate with the authorities if they suspect transgressions.

via China Moves to Tighten Data Controls – NYTimes.com.

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According to an NLJ story out Wednesday, the findings “could bolster legal claims that the automaker committed consumer fraud and racketeering.” That could mean good news for plaintiffs lawyers, like Northeastern professor Tim Howard, who is leading a bunch of suits against Toyota.

“Factually, it validates the legitimacy of our allegations that Toyota has been misleading the federal government and consumers, as far as the severity of the problems with their sticky pedals and their whole electronic throttle control system,” said Howard to the NLJ.

Howard also said the fines also may assist suits alleging that Toyota violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) by conspiring to mislead consumers and the federal government about the extent of its safety problems, he said.

via The Toyota Fine: The $16M Might Not Be Toyota’s Biggest Problem – Law Blog – WSJ.

Welcome to the age of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a far-reaching bit of American legislation that cracks down on corporate bribery in all its forms and is rattling the cages of corporate chiefs the world over. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has jurisdiction over all related criminal violations under the act, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeps tabs on the civil violations committed by U.S. companies. What’s more, the law doesn’t just mean the U.S. government is looking for past incidents of corruption; it’s also stirring the pot to see who may be corruptible in the future.

via Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Cases Rise, Fines Mounting – TIME.

In the eight months since Australian citizen Stern Hu and his Chinese colleagues Wang Yong, Ge Minqiang and Liu Caikui were arrested, we've learned a great deal about the lack of certainty and rules not only in China, but also in the global commodities trade. Some of that is China's fault, but hardly all of it. The Australian government and Rio Tinto must share the blame for lack of transparency and failing to play by the rules.

Foreign media coverage of the arrests and trial has focused on whether the Chinese authorities pursued this case for political reasons. Remember that early last year, cash-starved Rio Tinto angered China by inviting Aluminum Corp. of China, or Chinalco, to take a $19.5 billion equity stake and then backing out of the deal under a combination of shareholder, government and public pressure. Rio was also driving a tough bargain in iron-ore price negotiations with Chinese buyers. Many observers speculated that the four executives were pawns in a high stakes game of tit-for-tat orchestrated from Beijing.

Certainly the timing of the case makes such suspicions inevitable. But the reality is probably more complicated. The Chinese justice system may be manifestly unfair, and once it gains momentum a guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion. Yet Rio itself put forces in motion that led to four men losing their freedom.

It all started with the boom in the global iron-ore market in the early 2000s. That’s when China’s steel industry embarked on a massive expansion of capacity, turning the trade in ore from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market. China’s large state-owned steelmakers bought at the benchmark price negotiated by Japanese and Korean mills, while smaller firms had to pay the higher spot price. This created an incentive for arbitrage and corruption, but unfortunately both the Chinese government and the mining companies were slow to take account of this in their internal controls.

via Hugo Restall: The Rules in China – WSJ.com.

The first step of a government investigation typically will be a grand jury subpoena, or a voluntary request or subpoena from a government agency, calling for the production of documents on specified topics. Because government investigations typically involve multiple subpoenas issued over time as the government’s investigation becomes more targeted or changes direction, however, companies typically try to preserve broadly in response to the initial request. This effort often includes a preservation notice issued to every employee within the company or within specific offices or departments.

In addition, companies should consider taking affirmative steps to preserve the information deemed to be most signifi cant, based on the limited information available at the outset of the investigation. This may involve running search terms on specific compilations of documents and preserving the hard drives of key employees. Doing so can minimize the negative consequences if employees fail to understand the directive or knowingly seek to destroy relevant information.

via How to Handle Hard Drives in Government Probe.