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The Morning Risk Report: Justice Department Extends Compliance Breaks to Antitrust Offenders
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Makan Delrahim oversees the Justice Department’s antitrust division. PHOTO: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
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Good morning. The U.S. Justice Department will begin rewarding companies that have systems in place to prevent antitrust crimes at the time a breach occurs, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar reports.
A company that can show it had a strong compliance program can receive discounts off fines and a more lenient type of settlement, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, who runs the department’s antitrust division, said in prepared remarks for a corporate compliance event Thursday at New York University’s law school. The department also has released written guidance on how it evaluates such programs, he said.
[Continued below...]
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“The time has now come to improve the antitrust division’s approach and recognize the efforts of companies that invest significantly in robust compliance programs,” he said.
The announcement, which Mr. Delrahim foreshadowed in a speech in May, extends a policy for crediting companies that develop programs for preventing corruption offenses. It is the latest effort by the Justice Department to incentivize companies to invest in programs that prevent crimes before they happen.
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Africans Say Governments Aren’t Doing Enough to Tackle Corruption
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Political leaders across Africa aren’t doing enough to combat bribery involving local public agencies and foreign companies, according to a survey of 47,000 citizens across the continent.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents said their government isn’t doing enough to fight corruption, according to the report from Transparency International, a nongovernmental anticorruption organization. Fifty-five percent of respondents said corruption within their country is getting worse.
The survey, which polled respondents in 35 African nations, highlighted countries where citizens say bribery is common. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, 80% of respondents said they paid a bribe in the past year to access public services, such as police or electric utilities.
“Public sector corruption doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Transparency International Chairwoman Delia Ferreira Rubio said in the report. “When money that should support critical services such as health care and education, flows out of countries due to corruption, ordinary citizens suffer the most.”
—Kristin Broughton
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From Risk & Compliance Journal
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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, attends a military officers’ promotions ceremony in Caracas. PHOTO: ZURIMAR CAMPOS/HANDOUT/SHUTTERSTOCK
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The U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency following the death of a Venezuelan naval officer last month, the Treasury Department said Thursday. The designation follows the release last week of a United Nations report that urged the Venezuelan government address and end alleged violations of economic, social and civil rights.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin PHOTO: OLIVER CONTRERAS/PRESS POOL
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in recent days urged U.S. suppliers of Huawei Technologies Co. to seek licenses to resume sales to the blacklisted Chinese firm, according to people familiar with the situation.
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France’s legislature gave final approval to a new tax on large technology companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc., shrugging off the threat posed by a new U.S. trade probe into whether the measure discriminates against American firms.
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Japan’s trade jab at South Korea’s chip makers was meant to be painful, but a week in, it appears to have given a momentary victory to the core targets: Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc.
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Chinese authorities disclosed some details of a restructuring of Anbang Insurance Group’s assets under a new name that now appears on the company’s headquarters in Beijing.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and legislators in both parties expressed broad concern about Facebook Inc.’s plan to create a cryptocurrency-based payment network, underscoring the intense legislative and regulatory scrutiny the project could face.
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Apple is working to fix a security flaw in the Walkie-Talkie app, which allows two Apple Watch users to send each other audio using a push-to-talk button. PHOTO: STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS
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Apple Inc. has disabled the Walkie-Talkie app on Apple Watches after finding a security flaw that could allow a person to listen in on someone else’s iPhone conversation without consent. It is the second eavesdropping-related glitch the company has moved to address in recent months as scrutiny of tech giants intensifies.
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Alphabet Inc.’s Google said contractors are listening to customer audio recorded by the company’s virtual assistant, a disclosure prompted by a media report that adds to privacy concerns associated with the technology.
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‘Big Tech must not censor the voices of the American people,’ President Trump said at the White House Thursday. PHOTO: EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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President Trump used the occasion of a social-media summit Thursday to laud a crowd of his supporters and to attack technology companies he says are trying to silence them. “Big Tech must not censor the voices of the American people,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of more than 100 allies who cheered him on. “This new technology is so important and it has to be used fairly.”
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Protesters disrupted an Amazon.com Inc. event Thursday, voicing opposition to the company’s ties to entities that enforce the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
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A fund managed by an Eaton Vance subsidiary invests in companies including Ecolab, which installed a clean-in-place system at Indeed Brewing in Minneapolis. PHOTO: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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A record amount of capital is flowing to investment managers who specialize in socially responsible investing, providing a bright spot for stock pickers who have otherwise struggled to keep client money. In the first half of the year, U.S. funds that consider environmental, social and governance factors when making new bets attracted a net $8.4 billion, according to data from Morningstar. That is already higher than the previous annual record of $5.4 billion collected during 2018. Clients have now committed $35 billion to what are known as ESG funds since 2013.
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Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA said founder Bjorn Kjos was stepping down as chief executive, as the airline reported sharply lower earnings, reduced its growth guidance and took a large accounting charge.
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Boeing Co. said the head of its 737 MAX program will retire after less than a year leading the division engulfed in crisis following two fatal crashes of the aircraft. Boeing said the departure of Mr. Lindblad, a 34-year company veteran, wasn’t a consequence of the fatal crashes of 737 MAX planes operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines that together killed all 346 people on board.
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The board of consulting company Accenture PLC has named the head of the company’s operations in North America as its new chief executive.
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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. named a new finance chief, a move that comes as the biopharmaceutical company faces new competition from drug giant Pfizer Inc.
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Cargill said its fiscal fourth-quarter profit dropped 67% to $235 million while revenue declined 1% to $29.9 billion. PHOTO: ALY SONG/REUTERS
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Cargill Inc. is altering its global food trading to navigate production problems and trade disputes that have cut deeply into the agricultural giant’s profit.
The Minnesota-based company is shipping more farm commodities to Europe and the Middle East because of China’s tariffs on U.S. goods such as soybeans and ethanol, said David Dines, Cargill’s chief financial officer. Cargill is also boosting international sales of beef and poultry, as a hog disease sharply cuts into China’s pork production.
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A woman looks at her profile on the Bumble BFF app in Brooklyn, N.Y., in March. PHOTO: JILLIAN KITCHENER/REUTERS
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The owner of dating app Bumble said it plans to spend $100 million creating an array of new dating apps, part of an expansion and revamp of the privately held holding company that also owns Lumen, a dating app for people over 50, and gay-dating app Chappy. The promised investment represents a challenge to rival Match Group Inc., the New York-listed owner of online dating giant Match.com and fast-growing dating apps Tinder and OkCupid.
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Volkswagen AG has agreed to invest around $2.6 billion in Ford Motor Co. ’s autonomous-vehicle partner, Argo AI, in a deal that values the startup at $7 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Ford has been the majority shareholder of Pittsburgh-based Argo since early 2017, when it agreed to invest $1 billion.
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