The Biggest Ethics and Compliance Issues of 2025 So Far

At any organization, there 10% of employees can always be counted on to do the right thing, and 10% of employees can always be counted on to do the wrong thing. The challenge of ethics and compliance is to reach that 80% in the middle. But as we often see in any given day’s headlines, that 10% of committed wrongdoers have a way of causing considerable havoc.

As Ethisphere continually monitors the latest trends in business integrity, we see opportunity in every setback for organizations to restore, revise, and reenergize their ethics and compliance efforts. That is why, in this article, we present many of the biggest E&C headlines from the first half of 2025.

Each of the stories below is a case study in the value that a strong compliance function and culture of ethics creates…as well as the serious risks that come from disregarding business integrity.

JANUARY

The Great DEI Pushback. In 2024, a number of high-profile corporations either walked back their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or ended them altogether, in the face of conservative politicians and activists. This entered an acute phase in January, when President Trump took office.
On Jan. 6, McDonald’s announced it was walking back its DEI efforts,and it was followed by a number of other companies that did likewise…and those that held firm to their DEI commitments, despite boardroom challenges by activist investors.
· On April 11, Forbes publishes a current list of companies that have walked back their DEI programs.
· In late February, TIME publishes a list of companies standing firm on upholding their DEI commitments.
· Costco rejects an activist shareholder proposal that the company rethink its DEI policies. “Our focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is not, however, only for the sake of improved financial performance but to enhance our culture and well-being of people whose lives we influence,” Costco said in a statement.
· John Deere shareholders overwhelmingly reject an anti-DEI proposal championed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a right-wing political and lobbying organization.
· A quarter of U.S. shoppers abandon their favorite stores over those stores’ political stances (such as DEI walkbacks). Case in point: Target’s DEI retreat costs the retailer more than $12B in market value.
· Joelle Emerson writes in Harvard Business Review how many organizations are continuing their DEI initiatives amid anti-DEI backlash, including narrative reframing, and better use of data.
Two broker-dealers for finserv company Robinhood will pay a combined $45 million to settle numerous charges from the SEC around failures to prevent suspicious trading and protect data.
Google tells the European Union that it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law, saying that current legal requirements are sufficient.
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler families agree to increase their contribution to $7.4 billion to settle its mass opioid litigation, which alleges the company and its owners knowingly contributed to the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic, which has killed more than 400,000 Americans since 2019. Meanwhile, Kroger agrees to pay $110 million to the state of Kentucky to settle claims that the supermarket chain’s pharmacies helped to fuel the state’s opioid crisis.
The Wall Street Journal offers a detailed look inside how U.S. Custom and Border Protection prevents prohibited goods – like those made with slave labor – from entering U.S. markets.
S&P Global Intelligence provides a helpful look at why more organizations are appointing Lead Independent Directors.
A deep feature by Defector into Chinese company Color Star details “a grim truth of modern capitalism: You do not become rich by selling things to consumers. You become rich by selling projects to investors.”
Bob Menendez is sentenced to 11 years in prison for “an egregious abuse of power” in which the former New Jersey Senator traded political favors to foreign agents among others in exchange for gold bars, cash, and cars.
ProPublica publishes report on how multiple health plans and insurers failed to comply with federal law requiring them to provide equal levels of access to mental health care as they do to other forms of health care.
MIT Sloan Management Review discusses how leaders can address the five toxic attributes – disrespectful, noninclusive, unethical, cutthroat, and abusive – that “poison corporate culture in the eyes of employees.”
Michael Bloomberg announces that his charity, Bloomberg Philanthropies, will cover the financial contribution and reporting commitment that were abandoned when the U.S. government pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords almost immediately after President Trump re-took office.

FEBRUARY

President Donald Trump issues an Executive Order on Feb. 10 that effectively halts enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)—a law enacted in 1977 and amended in 1988 that prohibits U.S. businesses from paying or receiving bribes in order to secure international business. Trump says the FCPA puts U.S. businesses at a disadvantage, but Ethisphere disagrees. Following the news, the U.S. slipped to an all-time low on an international corruption index.
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) will no longer consider gender, racial, and/or ethnic diversity of a company’s board when making vote recommendations around director re/elections.
Proposed new rules will require Canadian banks and other national institutions to disclose diversity of their boards and top management.
GRC software provider Diligent expands advisory services with acquisition of E&C consultancy Spark Compliance.
The U.S. Department of Justice signals its intent to target trade compliance violations by way of the False Claims Act.

MARCH

NPR investigation finds that law clerks and other judicial employees suffer unchecked workplace bullying and abuse within the federal court system.
Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen resigns following an investigation into his personal conduct. Kroger does not disclose the nature of the conduct, other than to say it unrelated to financial performance and was inconsistent with its ethics policy.
Swiss courts find Trafigura and former Chief Operating Officer Mike Wainwright guilty of bribing Angolan officials for oil contracts.
EY publishes guide highlighting the key compliance implications of the EU Omnibus Simplification Package.
United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland form a new task force to fight bribery, in light of the U.S. FCPA enforcement pause.
Morrison Foerster publishes the top 10 international anti-corruption developments for February 2025.

APRIL

Paul Marchant, CEO of European fast fashion retailer Primark, resigns after an investigation into improper behavior toward a woman in a social environment
Germany’s conservative coalition government eliminated its human rights and environmental supply chain due diligence law, the Supply Chain Act (LkSG).
Deutsche Bank faces a $100 million retaliation lawsuit for allegedly firing a former senior operations manager for speaking up on efforts to hide a $30 million operational mishap from regulators.
The European Commission has fined numerous automakers and European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) nearly half a billion dollars for their participation in an anti-recycling cartel.
Christine Hunsicker, CEO and director of fashion technology company Caastle has resigned and faces accusations of financial misconduct over the squandering of over $530 million in venture capital.
Bloomberg UK has published a bombshell report on widespread allegations of sexual harassment, alcohol abuse, and other toxic workplace culture behavior at London real estate leader Foxtons.
The UK Serious Fraud Office releases new standards for self-reporting, cooperation, and deferred prosecution agreements.
Federal prosecutors are seeking a sentence of 18 years for the former Detroit Riverfront Conservancy CFO William Smith for embezzling $44.3 million from the nonprofit over 10 years to fund lavish gifts to his girlfriend, private yacht charters, and trips to Las Vegas.
Dutch police raided a Chemours (formerly DuPont) chemical plant in Dordrecht on suspicion of an alleged release of toxic substances into the environment. The raid stems from a 2023 criminal complaint assuring Chemours executives with knowingly polluting the environment.
Amy C. Edmondson (author of Right Kind of Wrong) and Michaela J. Kerrissey publish an article on six misconceptions around psychological safety that organizations trip over.
CNBC reports that job-seekers are flooding U.S. companies offering remote positions with fake, AI-generated job profiles. At this rate, says management consulting firm Gartner, 25% of all global job-seekers will be fake by 2028.
Brian Busby, former Chief Operating Officer of the Houston Independent School District, has been found guilty of a conspiracy to defrauding the school district of $7 million by steering landscaping contracts to a conspirator in exchange for bribes and free home renovations.
The European Union imposes nearly $800 million in fines on Apple and Meta for breaching EU digital competition laws
Corporate Compliance Insights publishes a must-read editorial from an anonymous compliance officer about the struggles of their profession.

MAY

Kohl’s terminates CEO Ashley Buchanan for two counts of violating the company’s conflicts of interest policy by directing business to his romantic interest, former Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Chandra Holt. Learn more on the Ethicast.
The National Football League has fined the Atlanta Falcons $250,000 and its defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich for their roles in the embarrassing “Prankgate” data security lapse during the 2025 draft. Learn more on the Ethicast.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rules that Apple has violated an antitrust ruling directing the company to loosen its App Store restrictions, and has referred the case to federal prosecutors for criminal contempt investigation.
University of Zurich investigates researchers who sparked online outrage after revealing a months-long social experiment in which they secretly used AI to change people’s opinions in a Reddit forum without obtaining informed consent from the forum users themselves. Reddit Chief legal Officer Ben Lee called the research “improper and highly unethical.”
S&P 500 Boardrooms have “entered a new era” as White, male directors have now become a demographic minority. The data here comes from ISS-Corporate, which points out that first time, women and non-White men hold just over half of the boardroom seats at S&P 500 companies. And not coincidentally, the number of women CEOs has risen noticeably from 2000-2020.
A legal team at Davis Wright Tremain files an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of employers with DEI programs and organizations that support them. The brief challenges the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI Executive Order on the grounds that the DEI policies are legal, effective, and good for business.
Emergn publishes Breaking the Failure Cycle, featuring Harvard Business School scholar Amy Edmonson on how to beat “transformation fatigue” with psychological safety and learning to “fail well.”
The EEOC sues Honolulu-based hotel Paia Inn for sexual harassment against its employees and for retaliating against those who spoke up.
The SEC and DOJ charge the executives of non-profit Legacy Cares and its for-profit affiliate, Legacy Sports, for defrauding investors out of more than $280 million around the development of a doomed pickleball complex.
The U.S. Department of Justice announces new parameters for what kinds of crime will qualify under the Whistleblower Pilot Program. Going forward, the Pilot Program will prioritize Trump policy priorities—namely,immigration violations and tariff cheats. Learn more on the Ethicast.
Chase, Bank of America, and Citbank all feature as go-to locations for extensive Chinese money laundering operations that “hide in plain sight” and act on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. This is the kind of thing the DOJ is now prioritizing in its enforcement.
The Justice Department may drop its criminal prosecution of Boeing for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed and killed 346 people.
A new Anthropic model, Claude Opus 4, can use its access to a user’s email app to report a customer to law enforcement or submit a whistleblower report to a news outlet if it detects that it is being used for “egregious wrongdoing.”
The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) opens the public comment period on its new, principles-based corporate governance framework.

JUNE

Purdue University honors four staff and two students with the 2025 Walk the Talk award, for individuals “who most exemplify strong ethical character in their dealings with others, champion ethical practices or programs, or apply personal values in a manner that demonstrates integrity and high standards of excellence.”
In a fiery opinion, Federal Judge Richard Leon strikes down President Trump’s executive order against law firm WilmerHale as “absurd” and unconstitutional.
Wall Street Journal reports that top law firms that appeased President Trump to avoid punitive executive orders have created rifts with their own partners, alienated junior associates, and displeased large clients.
In “Why Compliance Fails,” Avangrid Chief Compliance Officer Andrew Jacobs writes that compliance training efforts should shift from imparting knowledge and communicating policy to ethical culture and storytelling.
Colombian narcotics kingpin Diego Marín discovers that it’s a whole lot easier to run a $100M/year criminal empire when you simply bribe the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to help you do it.
Intel files to recover over $840,000 embezzled by a former employee and a third-party vendor Israel in a fraudulent invoices conspiracy that ran from 2023 to 2024 and relied on insider information.
IT security leaders at Mandiant and Google Cloud say that many companies across the Fortune 500 have hired North Korean agents to remote IT positions, granting them access to sensitive internal systems.
Google parent Alphabet to spend $500 million over the next 10 years on systemic reforms as part of its settlement of a shareholder lawsuit. Among the reforms: A board-level committee devoted to overseeing the company’s regulatory compliance and antitrust risk and will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai.
Gary Cox, CEO of healthcare software company Power Mobility Doctor Rx convicted by a federal jury for his role in a conspiracy to defraud Medicare and other federal health care programs of more than $1 billion.

The Biggest Ethics and Compliance Issues of 2025 So Far

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

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