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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/creativenemo on 2024-08-13 16:55:04+00:00.

I work as a senior compliance officer in a large multinational corporation that operates in highly regulated industries. My job is to ensure that we meet all regulatory requirements across different markets. It’s a complex job, but after 15 years in the industry, I’ve seen it all—or so I thought.

Our company recently brought in a new CFO, Julia, who was determined to cut costs across the board. She was a numbers person through and through, and in her mind, compliance was a bloated department that could easily be trimmed down. We had several meetings where she’d question every expense, every process, every role. It was clear that she didn’t understand the intricacies of compliance and didn’t care to learn.

One day, Julia called me into her office and told me that my team was “too expensive” and that I needed to lay off 30% of my staff. I tried to explain that each person on my team was responsible for managing compliance in different jurisdictions, and cutting staff would put the company at risk of non-compliance, leading to fines or worse. But Julia was having none of it. “We’re overstaffed. Make it work, or I’ll find someone who can,” she said.

Seeing no other option, I complied. I made the layoffs, reluctantly letting go of some of my most experienced staff. But I knew that this was a ticking time bomb.

A few months later, our company was bidding for a massive contract with a government entity worth half a billion dollars. Winning this contract would be a game-changer, and the pressure was on to ensure everything was in order. Julia was leading the charge, but the timelines were tight, and we had to submit all compliance documentation within a week.

Here’s where things got interesting. One of the key compliance documents required for the bid involved an obscure regulation in a small market we operated in—let’s call it Country X. The regulation was something that only one of the laid-off team members, a guy named Peter, had handled. The documentation needed his specific knowledge and a set of reports that were saved on his company-issued laptop, which had been returned and promptly wiped after his departure.

Julia, not understanding the gravity of the situation, assumed this was a minor hiccup and ordered me to “just find the reports” or “recreate them.” But the process wasn’t that simple. The reports were generated through a custom-built tool that Peter had developed over years, and there was no way to replicate them without his expertise. I calmly explained this to Julia, who then realized the severity of the situation.

Desperate, Julia asked me to contact Peter and see if he could help us out as a consultant. I reached out to Peter, who was understandably bitter about his sudden layoff but willing to listen—for the right price.

I reported back to Julia that Peter was willing to assist, but he was asking for a six-figure consulting fee. Julia balked at the cost but realized she had no choice. Peter was the only person who could get us the documents we needed to comply with the regulations in Country X.

Peter returned, and within two days, he produced the necessary reports. However, when Julia submitted the bid, it was too late. The delays caused by the scramble had already set us back, and the contract went to a competitor who had everything in order on time.

The fallout was significant. The company lost out on a $500K deal, and the board of directors was furious. Julia’s cost-cutting measures, which had seemed so effective on paper, had directly led to this catastrophic loss.

The kicker? Peter’s consulting fee and the costs of cleaning up the compliance mess afterward were more than double the savings Julia had achieved by laying off my team. And as for me? The board decided that compliance was too important to be left to the whims of someone who didn’t understand it. Julia was quietly let go, and I was promoted to a new role—Head of Global Risk Management, with a mandate to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again.

I made sure to hire Peter back on a full-time basis, with a significant raise. We never spoke of the incident again, but I made it a point to always remind my team that their work, though often invisible, was invaluable. And from then on, compliance was never taken for granted.