EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MONITORS — PART 2
NOVEMBER 26, 2020
What is the Power of a Pre-Settlement Monitorship?
Most generally, a “pre-settlement monitorship” occurs when an organization engages an independent body to conduct any kind of a third-party review or assessment. This may often be known as a “proactive monitorship.” In either situation, a company desires to assess its implementation of a compliance and ethics program on a proactive basis. Such a monitorship does more than simply focus on whether there is a compliance program in place but more fully assesses its effectiveness. This assessment can be used by a wide variety of end-user parties, such as the corporation itself, with its stakeholders, with regulators or even with the public to demonstrate compliance with a wide variety of issues.
Using this type of a proactive monitorship can help an organization to assess not only where they might be now but also work to create a road map to improve and strengthen their culture of compliance and ethics going forward.
Internal Cultural Assessment
A key piece of the pre-settlement monitorship is to assess the company’s culture of compliance. Using this type of a proactive monitorship can help an organization to assess not only where they might be now but also work to create a road map to improve and strengthen their culture of compliance and ethics going forward. Finally, another reason for performing a pre-settlement monitorship might be when a company wants to explicitly demonstrate its due diligence to law enforcement or regulators should something occur in the future that would result in action against the company.
Another way to look at the pre-settlement monitorship might be as a preemptive strike against a forthcoming punitive action.
Preemptive Strike/Preventing a Suspension/Debarment Action
Another way to look at the pre-settlement monitorship might be as a preemptive strike against a forthcoming punitive action on the part of government agencies. My company, Affiliated Monitors has had instances where companies subject to an action with one level of government, such as a US Attorney’s Office in one area of the country, will use the pre-settlement monitorship to avoid being suspended or barred by the federal government and from federal government contracts. The pre-settlement monitorship performs a complete review, then made recommendations for remediations. This led to positive resolution with the government in the form of declining a suspension or debarment action.