Hiring someone to investigate misconduct isn’t always going to save your board. The line between bad management and bad faith just got real. Here’s a question every board member should be losing sleep over: when does a board’s failure to catch corporate misconduct cross the line from bad management into an actual breach of fiduciary duty? Delaware just gave us two new answers, and they...
The House of Representatives voted 262 to 159 on the night of September 16 to approve a sweeping Russia and Iran sanctions bill, sending it to President Trump for his expected signature. The legislation, renamed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act after the late South Carolina senator who championed it for more than a year before his death in July, cleared the...
Part 1 of this series explained why AI vendor relationships break the assumptions built into most standard software procurement templates, and where those legacy templates leave organizations exposed: silent or vague data training rights, indemnification that doesn’t reach AI-specific harms, no meaningful audit rights, and liability caps that quietly undercut whatever protections do exist. Part 2 gets specific about what to actually put in the...
Every organization that’s adopted AI tools over the past few years has also, whether it realized it or not, been signing a new category of vendor contract, one that carries risks your standard software or services agreement template was never built to address. This is Part 1 of a two-part series on modifying vendor contracts to build in real protections against AI risk. Here, we...
In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov breaks down why the EU AI Act has moved from a future planning exercise to an actively enforced regulatory regime, with the European Commission’s AI Office holding full investigative and fining authority since August 2026, having already opened its first formal investigations in June 2026 into hiring tools, credit scoring systems, and student monitoring applications....
Hiring someone to investigate misconduct isn’t always going to save your board. The line between bad management and bad faith just got real. Here’s a question every board member should be losing sleep over: when does a board’s failure to catch corporate misconduct cross the line from bad management into an actual breach of fiduciary duty? Delaware just gave us two new answers, and they...
The House of Representatives voted 262 to 159 on the night of September 16 to approve a sweeping Russia and Iran sanctions bill, sending it to President Trump for his expected signature. The legislation, renamed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act after the late South Carolina senator who championed it for more than a year before his death in July, cleared the...
Part 1 of this series explained why AI vendor relationships break the assumptions built into most standard software procurement templates, and where those legacy templates leave organizations exposed: silent or vague data training rights, indemnification that doesn’t reach AI-specific harms, no meaningful audit rights, and liability caps that quietly undercut whatever protections do exist. Part 2 gets specific about what to actually put in the...
Every organization that’s adopted AI tools over the past few years has also, whether it realized it or not, been signing a new category of vendor contract, one that carries risks your standard software or services agreement template was never built to address. This is Part 1 of a two-part series on modifying vendor contracts to build in real protections against AI risk. Here, we...
In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov breaks down why the EU AI Act has moved from a future planning exercise to an actively enforced regulatory regime, with the European Commission’s AI Office holding full investigative and fining authority since August 2026, having already opened its first formal investigations in June 2026 into hiring tools, credit scoring systems, and student monitoring applications....
Third-Party Risk and Sanctions: Screening, Diligence, and Enforcement September 30, 2026, 12 Noon EST Sign Up HERE ___________________________________________________________________________ Building an Effective Ethics and Compliance Program in the Age of AI October 14, 2026, 12 Noon EST Sign Up HERE ____________________________________________________________________________ Join Michael Volkov for Two Important Webinars: Third-Party Risk and Sanctions: Screening, Diligence and Enforcement: Sanctions enforcement is accelerating, and the U.S. and its allies are...
Part 1 of this series looked at what the Teligent and Regions Financial cases teach about escalation and response under Delaware’s Caremark doctrine. In Part 2, we turn to the most significant recent Caremark development, the 2026 Boeing dismissal, and what the emerging doctrine means in practice for compliance officers building or defending an oversight program. Boeing 2026: The Counterweight to Caremark’s Expansion The most...
I wasa honored to appear recently on Greg Rasner’s Third Party Threat Hunters Podcast to discuss Third-Party Sanctions Risk. You can listen to it HERE. Thanks to Greg and his incredible team.
Delaware courts have spent the last several years wrestling with one of the hardest questions in corporate governance law: at what point does a board’s failure to prevent corporate misconduct stop being ordinary bad management and start being an actual breach of the fiduciary duty of loyalty? That question sits at the center of Caremark doctrine, and a run of recent decisions, involving Teligent, Regions...
OFAC fined an unnamed U.S. consultant just over $1.4 million for Iran sanctions violations tied to advisory work provided to a leading Iranian software company, and this case deserves careful attention because it demolishes a defense I still hear surprisingly often: the idea that providing remote advice, strategic guidance, or consulting services to an Iranian business, without physically operating in Iran or directly running the...
