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    Sep. 23, 2026

Scoular DPA: Earning Credit Under the Unified CEP

U.S. anti-corruption enforcers routinely introduce new policies and programs promising benefits to companies that self-report, cooperate and remediate issues, but the value of such incentives becomes clear only when the policies are applied in practice. The July 2026 settlement of the first FCPA case under the DOJ’s Department-wide corporate enforcement policy (Unified CEP), introduced in March 2026, offered the first meaningful test of how the new framework would be applied. This third and final article dissecting that settlement – with the Scoular Company, an agricultural firm based in Omaha, Nebraska – analyzes the ways in which the company was able to earn credit for its cooperation and remediation. The first article looked at the role that transnational criminal organizations and foreign terrorist organizations played in the settlement. The second article reviewed the details of the bribery scheme and what it indicates about third-party risk in the second Donald Trump presidential administration. See our two-part series on the Unified CEP: “One Policy to Rule Them All?” (Apr. 8, 2026), and “The VSD Calculus” (Apr. 22, 2026).

Berko Conviction Demonstrates the Value of Rigorous Internal Controls

A jury recently convicted Asante Kwaku Berko, a former Goldman Sachs (Goldman) executive director, for bribing government officials to secure a deal to construct a power plant in Ghana. While Berko now faces jail time, Goldman was able to avoid prosecution because its internal controls worked as intended, raising red flags and leading to cancellation of the crooked deal. The Anti-Corruption Report spoke with experts in the field about how the case demonstrates that an effective compliance program can both ferret out a rogue actor and protect the institution, and whether there is still room for bread-and-butter bribery enforcement during the second Donald Trump presidential administration. See “Zaglin Conviction Offers Insights on Individual Prosecutions in Trump 2.0” (Oct. 22, 2025).

Managing the AML Risks of Cross-Border Trading

There have been a number of instances of fraudsters purchasing U.S. listed stocks or commodities of foreign issuers and engaging in “ramp and dump” schemes that are difficult to detect and harder to prosecute, and U.S. enforcers have found the anti-money laundering (AML) laws to be their most effective tool to hold them to account. The practical consequence is that, even where the underlying market manipulation occurs largely overseas, U.S. regulators scrutinize whether domestic financial institutions recognized and addressed the associated AML risks. In this article, Mayer Brown partners Hiral Mehta and Michele Cerezo-Natal, with associate Findley Penn-Hughes, outline how guidance and enforcement have developed since 2020, set out the legal framework, and offer practical steps for financial institutions, foreign issuers and their advisers. See “How Money Laundering Allegations Turn Foreign Violations Into Domestic Cases” (Mar. 26, 2025).

Five Key Culture Indicators to Measure Compliance

Compliance programs have traditionally relied on activity metrics such as training completion rates, policy attestations and hotline volumes. Increasingly, however, organizations – and regulators – are seeking deeper insights into compliance culture, including whether employees understand their obligations, feel empowered to raise concerns and trust the organization’s compliance framework. To answer these questions, companies can collect quantitative data about five key compliance culture indicators to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their programs. This article synthesizes insights from a panel at the SCCE Data Analytics for Compliance Programs conference, held in August 2026, about how to transform employee perceptions into measurable indicators that can help legal and compliance teams identify risks, target remediation efforts and demonstrate program effectiveness. See “A Step-by-Step Approach to Upleveling Compliance Analytics” (Jul. 2, 2025).

Checklist for Contracting With AI Vendors to Mitigate Risks

In 2026, every vendor is effectively an AI vendor, as the technology is embedded deeper into products and services, reshaping compliance and contracting considerations. That shift is creating tension in negotiations, as vendors and customers both seek to reap AI’s business benefits. This checklist offers a structured approach to navigating those pressures, providing detailed advice for crafting vendor contracts involving AI tools and services. It includes preparatory steps for negotiations as well as six core AI-specific clauses to address risk. See our four-part series on compliance representations and warranties: “Definitions and Goals” (Mar. 25, 2026), “Negotiations” (Apr. 8, 2026), “Verification and Enforcement” (May 6, 2026), and “Adapting to Emerging Risks” (Jul. 1, 2026).

Barnes & Thornburg Welcomes Three Partners in D.C.

Barnes & Thornburg has welcomed three partners to its Washington, D.C., office. Former federal prosecutor Adeyemi Adenrele has returned to the firm’s white collar, compliance and investigations practice, and Brittney Powell and Matthew West have joined the international trade practice. For insights from Barnes & Thornburg, see our three-part series on the Scoular DPA: “DOJ’s Focus on TCOs in Action” (Aug. 26, 2026), “A Customs Broker Enables Health and Safety Violations” (Sep. 9, 2026), and “Scoular DPA: Earning Credit Under the Unified CEP” (Sep. 23, 2026).

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