I'm Alexandra Ragi, and for today's Trace Compliance Minute, Nat Edmonds, of Paul Hastings,

will explain the biggest mistakes companies make after they discover a bribe may have been paid.

Go ahead, Nat.

The biggest mistake that a company can make is either overreacting or underreacting to the situation,

and that can lead to dramatically negative impacts either way.

The key things to be aware of is that the company must stop any ongoing misconduct.

Figure out how the payments may have gotten out of the company.

Make sure you close that gap in whatever way you can to ensure that the financial controls

are not letting money out while you determine whether

or not the bribe actually is improper. The next step is to make sure that you preserve documents.

Nothing makes enforcement agencies more upset than letting documents disappear. Do whatever you can

to lock down the electronic data, usually on the back end, and then determine whether

or not you need to get

paper documents as well. And the third piece is ensure that everything that is done early on in

the investigation is done in a way that is protected. Either you do it under privilege or you do it

in such a way that the information that is presented by your internal audit folks or your compliant folks

are not legal conclusions. They're not determining whether a bribe has been paid, but they're

just setting out the facts. All of these steps have to be taken early on to ensure that the company

is best protected. Don't overreact or don't underreact and make sure that your best position in your company to deal with whatever comes next.