MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE), a non-profit professional association serving more than 4,500 compliance and ethics professionals from across industry, today released its 2015 SCALENDAR, which chronicles corporate fines and settlements. The SCALENDAR is designed to help compliance and ethics professionals have a ready reference to demonstrate to employees the consequences of wrongdoing.
"We developed the SCALENDAR to help compliance and ethics officers looking for a way to engage employees and show them the consequence of non compliance," said SCCE CEO Roy Snell. "We never imagined we would see this level of fines and settlements."
The SCALENDAR was released during the 2014 Compliance & Ethics Institute, September 14-17, 2014 in Chicago. It is the association's annual meeting, which this year brings together more than 1,300 compliance and ethics professionals from across the globe.
More SCALENDAR details
The vast majority of the penalties chronicled arose directly from the mortgage meltdown. But there were substantial penalties elsewhere as well. The Pharmaceutical industry saw $2.8 billion in penalties added, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act settlements accounted for $1.1 billion.
"These are enormous numbers, but they represent only a piece of the pie," said Snell. "We only sought to include the large, headline grabbing incidents that people would be more familiar with. There were countless other incidents that we didn't include."
Also remarkable in the numbers were the penalties levied on the financial sector outside of the mortgage crisis. "We added just under $9 billion in settlements in cases ranging from the LIBOR case, to racial bias to credit card marketing this year."
According to Snell there are two key lessons to be taken from the SCALENDAR. "First, the costs of non-compliance far exceed the cost of compliance. No business today can justify not having an ethics and compliance program. Second, anyone who says compliance is expensive hasn't tallied the likely costs of a compliance failure."
The SCALENDAR is a part of the SCCE's annual Resource Guide and can be downloaded at no charge on the SCCE website at http://www.corporatecompliance.org/Portals/1/PDF/Resources/scce-2015-resource-guide.pdf.
About the SCCE
The Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics (SCCE), established in 2004, is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN. The association provides resources and training to compliance professionals and champions ethical practices and compliance standards. Visit the SCCE website at www.corporatecompliance.org.
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SOURCE Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE)
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