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Investigations are an essential tool for ensuring a company’s ethical standards are being followed by employees, business partners, and any others with whom the company interacts. However, investigations are also an essential tool for demonstrating and maintaining strong corporate governance – an integral part of a company’s ESG commitments and strategy. It is also a good time to set yourself some goals and resolutions. To help you on your way, we are pleased to share our top 5 Lunar New Year Resolutions for handling Internal or Government Investigations

The Doing Business in the Philippines handbook aims to equip both local and foreign entrepreneurs with a practical guide to navigating the ever-evolving business landscape in the Philippines. It provides information on the requirements needed when setting up and operating a business in the Philippines, including incentives under special registrations, taxation, employment, IP, dispute resolution, and industry-specific regulations.

Most European countries have already implemented the EU Whistleblower Directive into national laws. Now, companies across Europe are challenged to implement a whistleblowing system in their subsidiaries, that fully complies with the new national whistleblowing laws. Failure to do so may have highly negative implications for companies, their directors and their employees.

The last thirty days in September, the end of the US federal government’s fiscal year, is generally an important time to analyze enforcement activity by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In this short video, Baker McKenzie Partner Peter Chan, a former SEC Assistant Director of Enforcement, provides his insights regarding the importance of the timing of some of these enforcement actions.

On 15 July 2023 the Italian National Anti-Corruption Authority issued the new interpretative Guidelines of Legislative Decree no. 24/2023, implementing the EU Whistleblowing Directive. The new Guidelines aim at providing practical guidance to those employers that, pursuant to the new law, are now required to implement their own internal reporting channels.

Welcome to the 2023 edition of Baker McKenzie’s Doing Business in Canada, a practical guide to the business and investment legal framework and developments in Canada. We hope that you find this guide a useful and practical resource.

On 11 May 2023, GCI Communications Corp. (GCI) agreed to pay more than USD 40 million to the US government to settle allegations that it submitted false claims to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by knowingly inflating its prices in a competitive bidding program regulated by the FCC. The investigation began when a former GCI employee, Robert Taylor, filed a qui tam action against the company under the False Claims Act (FCA) after it allegedly falsely claimed and received funds from the FCC’s Rural Health Care Program. This settlement signals the DOJ’s intent to partner with other government agencies, in this case the FCC, in using the False Claims Act to combat fraud by organizations that service health care providers. It is also one of the DOJ’s largest settlements of allegations under the FCA in 2023.

The German Whistleblower Protection Act was (finally) passed on 12 May 2023, after several attempts, following final amendments proposed by the Mediation Committee on 9 May 2023, which have now been accepted by the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and the Federal Council (Bundesrat). The long overdue law serves to implement the European Whistleblower Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/1937), which actually provided for an implementation deadline of December 2021. The law will now come into force in mid-June 2023.