Month: March 2011

Las Vegas Sands FCPA Investigation: What Did Management Do When they First Found Out About Allegations of Bribery and Corruption?

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Earlier this week, Las Vegas Sands (NYSE:LVS) announced in its 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2010 that it is the subject of an FCPA investigation:

On February 9, 2011, LVSC received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting that the Company produce documents relating to its compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”). The Company has also been advised by the Department of Justice that it is conducting a similar investigation. It is the Company’s belief that the subpoena may have emanated from allegations contained in the lawsuit filed by Steven C. Jacobs described above. The Company intends to cooperate with the investigations.

Las Vegas Sands says that it is also the target of a similar investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Read moreLas Vegas Sands FCPA Investigation: What Did Management Do When they First Found Out About Allegations of Bribery and Corruption?

Tax Audits and Bad Recordkeeping

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You are being audited. These are some of the most dreaded words an individual or business will ever hear from a state or federal tax auditor. They invoke fear, panic, and sometimes anger.

Most of all, they create a need for documentation. Every number could be scrutinized. That means documentation must be produced to support the amount of each expense and the business purpose of the item.

Some of us are meticulous in our documentation, but if you are like most taxpayers, you have pockets of misplaced or destroyed data. Even worse, you may be in a situation where documentation was completely destroyed by a fire or flood. If you don’t have documentation, does that mean your deductions are automatically disallowed? Not necessarily.

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Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fraud

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Sarbanes-Oxley has done little to curb corporate malfeasance. Therefore, CFOs should implement a range of fraud-prevention measures.
Laton McCartney – CFO Magazine

As a convicted felon, Sam E. Antar, the former CFO for the now-defunct consumer-electronics chain Crazy Eddie, no doubt has regrets. Among them: he is no longer in the game at a time when corporate fraud is experiencing a resurgence. “If I were out of retirement today, I’d be bigger than Bernie Madoff,” he boasts.In conjunction with CEO Eddie Antar (his cousin), Sam Antar helped mastermind one of the largest corporate frauds in the 1980s, bilking investors and creditors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, he makes a living lecturing about corporate fraud (and shorting the stocks of companies he thinks may have inflated earnings).

Read moreWhere There’s Smoke, There’s Fraud