Licks Attorneys' COMPLIANCE Blog

According to Reuters, Pfizer Inc. filed a lawsuit on June 26, 2020, to make it possible to help beneficiaries of the federal healthcare program - Medicare - pay for two drugs to treat a rare and sometimes fatal heart disease, and that cost $225,000 a year.

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Corruption is a topic that always attracts the attention of the media and society.  In some ways, it resembles a kind of metastatic societal cancer, in which a cell released into the bloodstream may burst like a new tumor, anytime, anywhere.

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A TV commercial recently broadcast to promote a vehicle hire application informed viewers that it was the first and only company in the sector security certified by the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT).

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Is your risk assessment up to date?  This is a question that should regularly be asked within any financial institution.  Unfortunately, in most cases, the answer is postponed or even ignored, up until the moment when a government agent needs to evaluate that company's compliance program.

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The US Department of Justice (USDOJ) announced a historic nationwide enforcement action against healthcare fraud.  This unprecedented initiative involves 345 charged defendants in 51 federal districts, including more than 100 doctors, nurses, and other licensed medical professionals.

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Ordinance BACEN 3,978 of January 23, 2020, which was created for the purpose of regulating the policy, procedures and internal controls to be adopted by institutions authorized to operate by the Central Bank of Brazil (BACEN) with a view to preventing the use of financial system for the practice of crimes of “laundering” or concealment of assets, rights and values, as set out in Law 9,613, of March 3, 1998, and of terrorism financing, provided for in Law 13,260, of December 16, March 2016, would come into force on July 1, 2020. However, Ordinance BACEN 4,005, dated April 16, 2020, changed the effective date to October 1, 2020.

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The position of ‘Data Protection Officer’ – established initially under the terms of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – has been imported into Brazil’s equivalent General Data Protection Law (LGDP) with the slightly peculiar title of  “Encarregado.”

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In April 2018, the European Union launched a proposal to create a Directive standardizing whistleblower protection rules and clarifying the proper protection to be given to those reporting a company's misconduct.

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The definition of the 'foreign public official,' according to the USA's anti-corruption law – the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) – has always been a sui generis aspect of the regulation, considering its breadth in comparison with similar standards in other countries.

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The General Data Protection Law (LGPD), Law 13,709 of August 14, 2018, was enacted after the president's sanction, on September 18, 2020,  converting the Provisional Measure 959/2020 into law, and regulating the protection of personal data of individuals, with a level of detail never before achieved by any other local law.

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