Information from business emails is often very important for investigating breaches of rules or for court proceedings. However, strict legal requirements apply to the analysis and inspection of emails. The following overview sets out these requirements and describes the risks resulting from failure to comply with them, while focusing primarily on more recent court rulings. The article also shows how employers can effectively mitigate or avoid legal risks when monitoring emails. One of the main focuses of the overview is on recommended actions to take in practice and a checklist for preparing for and implementing access to business email accounts.

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It gives us great pleasure to introduce you to our second edition of the Compliance Elliance Journal (CEJ).

In this edition, we take a closer look at compliance in the healthcare industry, and focus on questions arising from the fast-growing healthcare compliance system. Our first set of articles explicitly deals with that issue.

In this edition, we take a closer look at compliance in the healthcare industry, and focus on questions arising from the fast-growing healthcare compliance system. Our first setof articles explicitly deals with that issue.

The meaning of Corporate Governance is all values and principles guiding or regulating good and responsible business management. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for managing compliance, risks and checks is the prerequisite for the latter. For that reason, a compliance management system was set up at the University Hospital Frankfurt in 2015.

This piece describes the journey of a student on a LawWithoutWalls ("LWOW") team that was charged with helping a large multinational defense firm, Lockheed Martin, solve this problem. This piece is not designed to teach the reader about supply chain management; instead, it will exemplify through a real-life experience how tough it is to teach people who are not compliance experts about the field’s complexities and, further, explore the difficulty in developing creative, practicable solutions to compliance problems.

German companies or German-based subsidiaries of international businesses may become subject of, or otherwise involved in, investigations by German or foreign regulatory or law enforcement authorities. In the context of such investigations, it is not unusual for the concerned company to face informal requests from German or foreign regulatory and law enforcement authorities for voluntary cooperation. Oftentimes, such requests focus on the transfer of electronic data for investigatory purposes, and such data typically relate, in whole or in part, to individuals (e.g. employees, suppliers and customers). In these and other cases, compliance of German companies or German-based subsidiaries with informal requests from regulatory and law enforcement authorities may itself entail a compliance risk or even constitute a breach by the corporate entity of the German data protection laws resulting in criminal prosecution, administrative sanctions, or damage claims and other actions by third party individuals. This article outlines the scope of application of the German Federal Data Protection Act, introduces the applicable statutory provisions, and discusses the relevant considerations in the context of an informal request by a regulatory or law enforcement authority for voluntary cooperation in the context of global investigations, in particular where a German-based entity faces requests from authorities abroad.

In light of the demanding requirements inherent to the operation of a university hospital, a multitude of compliance risks are entailed in the medical care, training, and research entail which such institutions are engaged in. If such risks materialize, the public will notice, which will substantially tarnish not only the public’s confidence in the proper functioning and the integrity of the impacted hospital, but ultimately, the whole German health care system. In examining the structural and requisite prevention protocols, three risk groups can be distinguished. The Düsseldorf University Hospital provides a leading example in the area of compliance management.

Conflicts of interest (COI) in healthcare have increasingly gained attention in the lay press as well as among healthcare professionals. COIs increase the risk of undue influence on professional decision making and may have far-reaching consequences in healthcare. Therefore, it is essential to develop strategies to deal with such risk situations in order to prevent negative outcomes for patients and the health care system. This article describes recent research on COIs in Germany as well as initiatives aiming at more transparency and better management of COIs in Germany.