Weak Putin?
Many see Putin's grab of Crimea as powerful, but yesterday at the JW Marriott, former Venezuelan trade minister, 14-year Foreign Policy editor-in-chief, and World Bank executive director Moises Naim said it proves that Putin is weak. (Wait, has he seen the bare-chested horseback riding pics?)
When Ukraine's president wanted to turn toward the EU, Putin essentially forbade it, and the president was run out of office—the annexation was a last-ditch attempt to salvage what was almost losing Ukraine entirely. It only succeeded in uniting Europe against Russia, says Moises. (We snapped him during Baker & McKenzie's conference on business strategy and public policy.) He also talked about the global change in traditional power: It's become easier to acquire, harder to wield, and easier to lose. While new "micropowers" (think Tea Party) can't displace the traditional players, they can constrain them and block their agendas.
We also learned that sending an email can also be an export control violation. (And here we thought misusing reply-all was the most egregious violation.) It happened to United Technologies when a subsidiary emailed software to China that helped adapt helicopter engines for military application (it got three criminal charges and settled for $75M). Not only emails can get you in trouble; someone checking out a sensitive document over your shoulder, even while standing on US soil, can count as a "deemed export." Baker & McKenzie partner Jonathan Poling, center, tells us it's not all about the physical technology now, it's the knowledge of how to create or mobilize. We snapped him next to Accenture associate GC Hillary Stanley and flanked by fellow partners Bruno Maeda, Daniel Goelzer, Paul McNulty, and David Hackett.
Paul, right, the former US Deputy AG, predicts that the next big enforcement front is data security. While FCPA enforcement is huge now, he thinks it'll level off in a few years. Money laundering will see more enforcement too. Hillary talked about the practical aspects of heading compliance for a 270,000-person company (Accenture). As regulators have moved from being satisfied with an ethics policy to needing to see effective compliance programs, she says the compliance group has grown tenfold. Monitoring and detection using data and analytics is a big focus. She also has a team of internal auditors to search out and tackle risk areas.
Baker & McKenzie's Gary Edson, who founded its compliance consulting arm, moderated a panel on engaging with the government. (Tips: do it proactively and often, but don't see government as a monolith.) Afterward, we snapped him with partners Beatriz Araujo and Liz Stern. Liz just stepped down as managing partner of the DC office, a spot that's been taken over by partner Richard Dean. Meanwhile, Baker & McKenzie is opening new offices; the latest is in Myanmar.
