Corruption Crime & Compliance

Hosted by Michael Volkov

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481

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Aug 2026

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About the show

Michael Volkov tackles the current and hot topics in the legal realms of corruption, crime, and compliance.

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60 recent

September 22, 20261 min

When Does Board Oversight Become Bad Faith? (Part 2)

Lo and behold, Boeing gets sued over another safety crisis, and this time Boeing actually won. Want to know why? They kept the receipts. Yesterday I told you about two cases where Delaware let Caremark claims move forward. Today, the case where the board won, and its most important Caremark decision in years. Boeing again. New litigation, this time over the 2024 Alaska Airlines door plug incident. Given Boeing’s history, you’d think this case had real legs. Delaware dismissed it anyway. Why? Because the record showed the board had dedicated safety committees, got regular reports on manufacturing and quality, discussed the issues repeatedly, and got updates on remediation. The court said Caremark doesn’t ask whether oversight succeeded. It asks whether directors consciously looked away. Here, they didn’t. Here’s the takeaway for every board and every compliance officer: a functioning reporting system, real information flow, and genuine engagement is real protection, even when the company faces another crisis. Build that record now, before you need it in litigation, because in Delaware, detailed board minutes showing you are paying attention might be the single best defense you have. The Ethics and Compliance Q and A show is produced by One Stone Creative.

September 20, 20267 min

Episode 450 -- Your Vendor Contract Template Was Not Built for AI

In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov explains why standard software procurement templates fail to protect organizations in AI vendor relationships, and what to do about it. He walks through the structural differences that make AI vendors riskier than traditional software vendors, multi-layered data flows through underlying foundation models, frequent model swaps, and vendors' commercial incentive to train on customer data, and identifies the specific gaps legacy contracts leave open: silent or vague data training rights, indemnification that doesn't reach model outputs or training data provenance, missing audit rights, and liability caps that quietly undercut existing protections. The episode closes with a concrete negotiating playbook, including explicit training restrictions, coordinated indemnification and liability provisions, audit rights, subprocessor disclosure, regulatory compliance representations, and guaranteed exit and data deletion rights, along with practical guidance for organizations facing dominant vendors unwilling to negotiate.

September 17, 20261 min

When Does Board Oversight Become Bad Faith? (Part 1)

Hiring someone to investigate misconduct isn’t always going to save your board. The line between bad management and bad faith just got real. Here’s a question every board member should be losing sleep over: when does a board’s failure to catch corporate misconduct cross the line from bad management into an actual breach of fiduciary duty? Delaware just gave us two new answers, and they cut in different directions. First, Teligent, a pharma company, an FDA compliance meltdown, and a court that let claims proceed against directors and two officers because the complaint showed information and mounting regulatory problems never made it to the people who could act on it. Second, Regions Financial case. A whistleblower sent the board a complaint about allegedly illegal overdraft fee practices back in 2019. The board hired an investigator. Good so far, but the company didn’t stop the practices until 2021, and a $191 million CFPB consent order was imposed. Delaware let the claims proceed here too. Here’s the lesson from both: escalation isn’t enough. Investigating isn’t enough. The board has to actually understand what it found and actually fix it. Stay tuned. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the case that shows the other side of this coin. The Ethics and Compliance Q and A show is produced by One Stone Creative.

September 16, 20268 min

Episode 449 -- The EU AI Act Is No Longer Theoretical

In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov breaks down why the EU AI Act has moved from a future planning exercise to an actively enforced regulatory regime, with the European Commission's AI Office holding full investigative and fining authority since August 2026, having already opened its first formal investigations in June 2026 into hiring tools, credit scoring systems, and student monitoring applications. He walks through the Act's fragmented compliance timeline, prohibited practices enforceable since February 2025, general-purpose AI obligations running since August 2025, and live chatbot transparency requirements, alongside the significant deadline relief the Digital Omnibus gave specifically to high-risk AI systems, pushed to December 2027. The episode closes with a clear warning: companies that read the Digital Omnibus as a blanket delay of the entire AI Act are making a costly mistake, since the tracks carrying real, current enforcement exposure, including fines up to 7 percent of global turnover, remain fully active today.

September 10, 20261 min

Can You Get Off the SDN List?

Has OFAC branded your company with the scarlet letter? Getting removed from the SDN list is possible, but it’s not fast, it’s not easy, and it’s not guaranteed. The primary path is a petition for administrative reconsideration filed with OFAC, arguing mistaken identity, changed circumstances, or that the original factual basis was simply wrong. You must prove it with real documented evidence. OFAC is skeptical of cosmetic restructurings designed to look like change while control remains the same. Practically, petitions can take many months to over a year, and you’re often arguing against evidence you’ll never fully see, since designations can rest on classified information. If OFAC denies or ignores your petition, you can challenge it in federal court, but courts defer heavily to the executive on sanctions, so litigation is a last resort, not a strategy. If you’re designated, get experienced OFAC counsel immediately, do a real internal investigation, build your remediation story, and manage expectations. It takes time. The best strategy is never needing this. Build a sanctions program rigorous enough that you never end up on the list at all. The Ethics and Compliance Q and A show is produced by One Stone Creative.

September 9, 202611 min

Episode 448: Caremark in 2026 — Where Delaware Draws the Line Between Bad Judgment and Bad Faith

In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov examines how Delaware's Caremark doctrine has matured through a recent run of decisions involving Teligent, Regions Financial, and Boeing, all centered on the question of when a board's failure to prevent corporate misconduct crosses from ordinary mismanagement into an actual breach of the duty of loyalty. He walks through Teligent's officer-level oversight failures in FDA compliance, Regions Financial's lesson that a whistleblower investigation without genuine follow-through and remediation doesn't satisfy Caremark's good-faith standard, and the pivotal 2026 Boeing dismissal, where extensive board and committee engagement on safety protected directors even after another serious incident. The episode closes with practical guidance for compliance officers on identifying mission-critical risks, building real escalation and follow-up procedures, and documenting board oversight, since Caremark, as these cases confirm, does not demand perfection, only a good-faith effort to oversee the risks that genuinely matter.

September 8, 20261 min

Is Your Sanctions Screening Enough?

Are you rubbing elbows with criminals? When OFAC designates someone a specially designated national, or SDN, it’s not a warning label. It’s a legal wall. Every asset that party has anywhere in U.S. jurisdiction, or in the hands of a U.S. person, is frozen. Every U.S. person is barred from transacting with them, directly or indirectly. The trap is OFAC’s 50% rule, which means any entity owned 50% or more in aggregate by blocked persons is automatically blocked too, even if it never appears on the published list. A clean name screen doesn’t mean a clean counterparty if you haven’t traced the ownership behind it. Enforcement is ratcheting up hard right now: Iran-related designations, cartel terrorism, Russia sanctions and evasion networks. The stakes are real - civil penalties in the tens of millions, frozen wires, correspondent banking risk, and secondary sanctions that can cut even non-U.S. companies off from the dollar system entirely. Sanctions screening can’t be a one-time check-the-box exercise. You need ongoing, ownership-aware screening that re-screens existing counterparties as the list evolves and actually traces beneficial ownership, not just the name on the contract. The Ethics and Compliance Q and A show is produced by One Stone Creative.

September 6, 20267 min

Episode 447 -- Veloxis Pharmaceuticals' $46 Million Kickback Settlement and What the CEP Really Rewards

In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov breaks down Veloxis Pharmaceuticals' more than $46 million settlement with DOJ and HHS-OIG over a years-long kickback scheme involving its kidney transplant drug Envarsus XR, a scheme the DPA says was directed in part by the company's own former CEO. He examines why Veloxis avoided prosecution and instead secured a deferred prosecution agreement under DOJ's Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy despite executive-level involvement in the misconduct, crediting the company's disclosure, cooperation, and termination of the responsible executives. The episode also unpacks the financial breakdown across civil, criminal, and Sunshine Act penalties, and closes with a detailed look at the structural compliance overhaul required under Veloxis's five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement, including a compliance officer mandated to report independently of legal and finance directly to the CEO and board.

September 3, 20261 min

When You Fail to Fix an Already Flagged Compliance Gap

At $125 million, breaking the law can never be a cost of doing business. UBS Bank was hit with a $125 million FinCEN penalty, the largest ever against a broker-dealer under the Bank Secrecy Act. This is UBS’s second Bank Secrecy Act action in less than a decade. In 2018, regulators told UBS: fix your foreign currency wire monitoring. It never did. The same gap stayed open for years, letting more than $10 billion in transactions move through unchecked. Layered on top, UBS failed to properly vet high-risk customers tied to Russia and Latin America, even after one of its own affiliates raised internal concerns about their sources of wealth. That warning went nowhere. UBS admitted it acted willfully and intentionally. Now, what’s the lesson? A prior enforcement action isn’t the end of the story. Regulators check whether you actually fixed what they flagged, and unfixed gaps read as willful the second time. High-risk geography demands ongoing monitoring, not a one-time onboarding check, and no institution’s size or reputation buys protection. UBS is one of the most respected private banks in the world, and that bought it nothing here but headaches. The Ethics and Compliance Q and A show is produced by One Stone Creative.

September 1, 20268 min

Episode 446 -- L3Harris's CEO Ouster and the Board Governance Lesson Nobody Learns the First Time

In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov examines L3Harris Technologies' abrupt ouster of chairman and CEO Christopher Kubasik over a code-of-conduct violation, and why the story is really a board governance cautionary tale rather than a typical enforcement matter. He traces Kubasik's earlier, similar departure from Lockheed Martin in 2012 alongside comparable cases involving Brian Krzanich at Intel and Mark Hurd at Hewlett-Packard, both of whom went on to lead other companies despite prior conduct violations, to explore why boards keep extending second chances to executives with this kind of history. The episode unpacks the distinction boards draw between personal-conduct issues and conduct that creates genuine enterprise risk, and argues that thorough vetting must translate into a documented, ongoing risk-mitigation plan rather than a one-time pass/fail judgment made during the hiring process, since, as L3Harris just learned, history has a way of repeating itself.