At the beginning of June 2022, we reported on the delayed activities of the German government to transpose the EU Directive 2019/1937 into national law (read the article here). In our second update, we briefly reported on the revised draft law from Berlin. Now, under considerable pressure from Brussels – the EU Commission had initiated penalty-based infringement proceedings against Germany. A final version of the HinSchG has been waved through via a mediation committee in Berlin. The new law will come into force one month after its promulgation, probably in mid-June 2023.
Once again, the government has not exactly excelled at the task. The legislation was put on hold for too long. The first drafts were constitutionally questionable and sloppy. The important issues of finally regulating corruption, compliance violations and other fraud in public offices and companies in Germany were not addressed.
Critical voices have not been silenced. On the contrary, this new law actually creates further legal uncertainties for companies. Companies and eventually the courts will again have to make up for lost time. Unfortunately, this is a recent development that can be observed more frequently across areas with...
This story is the second in an ongoing series on the Cost of Fraud, as Open the Books tallies the hidden fees on American tax returns. Click here to read the first story on fraudulent autism billi...