This year has already been significant in terms of compliance breaches by some of the world’s largest companies. And it’s not just business who’ve seen major failings recently, as we review recent compliance scandals in this years’ Compliance Update: 1 April Special.
Easter bunny fined for sanctions breaches
The Easter Bunny has been fined a record £21m by the Office of Financial Sanctions
Implementation (OFSI) for illegally importing up to 40 million Easter eggs. The eggs were illegally imported from Never Never Land in violation of international sanctions against the rogue state, with The Easter Bunny allegedly committing serious acts of bribery during the import of the eggs to cover up their origins.
Never Never Land continues to remain under severe international sanctions due to its failure to adhere to data protection laws and the continued WMD programme of dictator Captain Hook. With recent EU legislation expanding the scope of sanctions compliance, all organisations are being reminded to ensure their compliance is up to speed and they are not doing business with designated persons such as Captain Hook.
Free sanctions policy template
Santa Claus suffers massive GDPR breach
The ICO is conducting a major investigation into Santa Claus for one of the largest data breaches in history. Lists containing the personal data of billions of individuals were found
scattered around the North Pole. The data included what’s known as special categories of data under GDPR, including lists of the toy and candy preferences of under 18’s. The breach represents perhaps the biggest loss of data ever.
The ICO is actively seeking a warrant to seize all of Santa’s data, however the data processing systems used by the international toy distributor have been described as “19th Century at best.” With GDPR set to come into force on 25 May this year, the Information Commissioner has warned Santa faces fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover, and that this year, “Christmas may be cancelled”.
Elves rescued in modern slavery raids
Data protection is not the only compliance failure to hit the north pole. Despite Santa Claus basing operations outside the reach of international law in the North Pole, Santa has failed
to submit a modern slavery statement for the second year running.
A joint operation by Lapland police and SOCA recently uncovered thousands of elves held in conditions akin to modern slavery, with their identity documents locked away and forced to work round the clock in toy production factories. Businesses are reminded to train their procurement departments to ensure their supply chains have not passed through the North Pole.
Demo Modern Slavery: Raise Your Awareness
Tooth Fairy in money laundering arrest
Metropolitan Police have arrested The Tooth Fairy for laundering billions of pounds over decades. Her extensive criminal operation apparently went unnoticed for so long because of the relatively small amounts being laundered under children’s pillows. However, the average compensation children have been demanding per tooth has steadily risen to an average of £5 per tooth.
This increase in turnover enabled the Serious Fraud Office to track the money laundering operations and finally step in with dawn raids on Ms Fairy’s operations.
