Under the headline “The Crime Scene Cleaners”, the current issue of Manager Magazin reports on the “hidden business of the best compliance lawyers”. Among others, the article focuses on Dr. Andreas Pohlmann, who has been one of the “new stars of the legal scene” for many years and has earned an outstanding reputation as a “crisis specialist” and “old master” among compliance experts.
As early as 1993, he was involved in the internal clarification of the most serious chemical accident to date at the Hoechst chemical group in Frankfurt am Main. After the Hoechst spin-off Celanese had been taken over by the private equity investor Blackstone, Pohlmann had accompanied the controversial changeover to US regulations from Dallas. Thanks to this experience, he became head of compliance at Siemens in late summer 2007 to clear up its bribery scandal. His next stop was to become head of compliance at Ferrostaal, a major plant manufacturer in Essen, Germany, when it came under the scrutiny of the public prosecutor’s office. ”As a compliance chief, you show boundaries,” he says, ”but you also have to remain part of the company in any case, you can’t declare people all bad guys.”
Pohlmann’s U.S. contacts, in particular, proved valuable. In 2013, the Canadian corporation SNC-Lavalin brought him on as its compliance director. The task was to mitigate trouble with U.S. authorities. In 2016, the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice made him ”monitor” at Dutch telecommunications company Vimpelcom (now Veon). When Volkswagen monitor Larry Thompson wanted German guidance, he brought Pohlmann and his law firm on board. In 2020, the second monitoring mandate finally followed at the Swedish network equipment supplier Ericsson. The compliance professionals operate on a complex terrain – and under the highest pressure. Their job is to uncover, as discreetly as possible, what has gone wrong in a company, usually on behalf of the board of directors or supervisory board – and to cooperate with the state criminal and supervisory authorities in such a way that the outcome is as benign as possible for the company.
New laws promise new mandates. Companies face hefty fines if, for example, they work with foreign suppliers who violate human rights or environmental laws. ESG, short for environmental, social and governance, could become ”a new driver for compliance,” says Pohlmann; ”if only because of the unclear reporting requirements.”
To the article.