Category: conflicts of interest

Two related healthcare entities, Mercy Hospital Springfield and Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities, paid $34 million to settle False Claims Act charges related to services for patients whose doctors were paid for referrals. As part of the settlement, the healthcare entities signed a corporate integrity agreement with the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department […]

Having a written code of conduct (sometimes also called a “code of ethics”) is important — but it’s at least as important that you effectively develop and implement your code of conduct. When employees transgress it, employers need to take swift and appropriate action to remedy the situation. This is especially true of conflicts of […]

Conflicts of interest have been the ugly child of ethics and compliance programs for a while now. For most employees, it’s more of an ethical concern, not a legal one (key personnel like fiduciaries or company officers are different). While not as sexy as insider trading, popular as bribery, or diabolical as fraud, workplace conflicts […]

Sidoti & Company, LLC, a registered broker-dealer, paid $100,000 to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company had failed to establish and enforce policies to prevent the misuse of material nonpublic information (MNPI). According to the SEC’s settlement agreement, Sidoti started out as an independent research firm that published notes and […]

Most companies, including multilevel marketing companies, use commissions or similar incentives to compensate sales associates. Many incentive programs provide effective, ethical, and legal means of motivating sales. But poorly planned incentive structures court conflicts of interest and liability. Worse, systems built on false promises of high-income prospects can backfire, as one multilevel marketing company recently […]

Employees are an employer’s greatest assets, but we can also be liabilities (literally) when we don’t take our employer’s interests and workplace policies seriously. We can be fired, sued, and even imprisoned for actions that violate company policy. While we should all strive to be good people, we need to be conscious of decisions that […]

Most large organizations have a conflicts of interest policy and associated rules. Knowing what a conflicts of interest policy includes and how it should be followed is a compliance imperative. Background For many, conflicts of interest rules can be found in a company’s code of conduct, which typically outlines ethical behavior within the workplace. Generally, […]

Conflicts of interest can happen in almost every workplace. Employees and supervisors alike must balance their company’s best interest against their own. Though these situations can be common, they are serious ethical issues. What’s tricky about conflicts of interest is that it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint what constitutes a conflict of interest and who can have […]