International Law
The FCPA Blog 
News and Views About the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Post Frequency: 1.4/day Last Entry: November 14, 2009 at 02:19:00 Recent Entries: 491
Go to The FCPA Blog, find other International Law blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Search
Posts
We've Moved
Posted on November 14, 2009The FCPA Blog has moved to a new site.Please visit (and bookmark) us here.
Novak Pleads Guilty
Posted on November 12, 2009A former consultant for Willbros International Inc. (WII), a subsidiary of Houston-based Willbros Group Inc. (Willbros), pleaded guilty Thursday to engaging in a conspiracy to pay more than $6 million in bribes to government officials of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and officials from a Nigerian political party ...
Frederic Bourke's Big Bet
Posted on November 11, 2009Take it for a spin. We've launched a new-look FCPA Blog. Actually, the new model looks a lot like this one but with navigation features for improved handling. We know there are a couple of tweaks to make in the new site. Our webmaster, who's so young he still takes afternoon naps, will be fixing them soon...
Blackwater And The FCPA
Posted on November 10, 2009The New York Times on Tuesday alleged here that executives at the private military security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Bourke Gets A Year In Prison
Posted on November 10, 2009Frederic Bourke, the American entrepreneur who led a charmed life and whose prosecution brought new prominence to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $1 million for investing in a bribe-tainted deal in Azerbaijan and then lying to FBI agents about it...
Toss Jefferson's FCPA Conspiracy Count
Posted on November 09, 2009Before getting to William Jefferson, this reminder: Frederic Bourke is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan today (Tuesday, November 10) at 2:30 pm. He could be jailed for up to ten years for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and lying to federal investigators...
A Tweet Too Far?
Posted on November 08, 2009Last week, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger (left), made a very strange announcement. He confirmed on his Twitter page that the U.S. government had denied a visa to Kenya's attorney general Amos Wako. What's strange is that as far as we know, it's the first time an American official has ever revealed a visa determination under Presidential Proclamation 7750...
Gotham City East And West
Posted on November 05, 2009In China's western municipality of Chongqing, a special deployment of 25,000 police officers was called in to fight organized crime. Chongqing city proper has around five million people but the region-- called the "municipality" -- has closer to 32 million (California's population is about 36 million)...
The FCPA's Imperialist Myth
Posted on November 04, 2009Elizabeth Spahn (left), a professor at the New England School of Law, stopped by this week. She left a comment about Andy Spalding's latest post. In it, she cited her recent article that asks: Why is there so little legal scholarship regarding international bribery? Why aren't law professors training their students on the issue? Why, she asks, don?t legal educators want to talk about international anti-corruption initiatives?The answer, she says, is tied up with false notions in the West about legal imperialism...
Professor Podgor Pops The Question
Posted on November 03, 2009With so much to lose by going to trial, how many organizations and people will plead guilty to white collar crimes they didn't commit? Ellen Podgor (left) of Stetson University College of Law and the White Collar Crime Prof Blog asks that question in her latest essay, "White Collar Innocence: Irrelevant in the High Stakes Risk Game...
How Appealing Are Bourke's Chances?
Posted on November 02, 2009On the subject of Frederic Bourke -- the wealthy entrepreneur convicted in July of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and lying to FBI agents -- we now know what issues his lawyers plan to raise on appeal. Most relate to what Bourke knew and intended -- his mens rea...
The FCPA's Thwarted Intent
Posted on November 01, 2009The first time we heard from Andy Spalding (left), a lawyer on a year-long Fulbright Research Grant in Mumbai, India, he floored us with the idea that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act causes corruption and hurts poor people. We just heard from him again, this time about the way the Justice Department explains the purpose of the FCPA and approaches enforcement...
Make That Sixteen . . .
Posted on October 29, 2009Foreign Corrupt Practices Act researcher Cody Worthington responded to our post Their Days Are Numbered. To our list of thirteen people waiting to be sentenced for violating or conspiring to violate the FCPA, he suggested we add three more. Here they are:Joshua Cantor, the president of American Bank Note Holographics...
Senegal's Big Send-Off
Posted on October 28, 2009In Dakar, the capital of the West African country of Senegal, the IMF's regional representative was given a farewell dinner two months ago. After three years in the post, Alex Segura was heading back to his native Spain. As the evening ended, President Abdoulaye Wade handed Segura a going-away gift...
Their Days Are Numbered
Posted on October 27, 2009We count at least thirteen people waiting to be sentenced for violating or conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Both offenses carry a prison term of up to five years. And for substantive offenses the fine can be up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain produced by the bribes...
Russian Graft: The Video
Posted on October 26, 2009Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market, has accused police officials, bankers, judges and lawyers of working with gangsters to steal $230 million from the company and using its documents to obtain another $230 million from the Russian treasury through fraudulent tax refunds...
Halliburton May Face U.K. Charges
Posted on October 25, 2009Halliburton disclosed Friday in its latest SEC filing that the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) may bring civil claims or criminal charges against it under various British laws. In February this year, Halliburton and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root LLC, admitted paying Nigerian officials at least $182 million in bribes for contracts awarded between 1995 and 2004 to build liquefied natural gas facilities on Bonny Island, Nigeria...
Trees Fall To Graft
Posted on October 22, 2009In Malaysia this week, four forestry department officials, including the department director, an officer and two rangers, were arrested for taking a $30,000 bribe. In exchange, they allegedly awarded illegal logging concessions. Malaysia has prized hardwoods growing in protected areas in and around its rain forests...
How BAE Got Caught
Posted on October 21, 2009Investigative reporters may be disappearing from newsrooms everywhere, but they still have an important role to play in holding institutions and people accountable for overseas bribery. Rob Evans of the U.K. Guardian contributed an essay to TI's Global Corruption Report 2009 here...
Mandarin Monkey Business
Posted on October 20, 2009In Dongguan, a Chinese city on the Pearl River Delta, graft busters are using a powerful weapon against corrupt public officials: their mistresses. During a recent period, 32 out of 38 corruption cases handled by the city's prosecutors were based on complaints or confessions from girlfriends of married office-holders...
Goodbye To Waivers? Not So Fast . . .
Posted on October 19, 2009Companies facing criminal indictment for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other federal laws have a sure-fire way to help themselves. They can cooperate. Those found to have ?fully cooperated? under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are entitled to reduced penalties; most of them escape with a deferred or non-prosecution agreement...
The Story Of Graft
Posted on October 18, 2009Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2009 is here. At 462 pages, it may be the most complete account of global corruption and anti-bribery efforts ever assembled. Reference books like this are both important and fun; you don't need to read from front to back, first page to last...
Who Owns The War?
Posted on October 15, 2009We've talked before about corruption in Afghanistan. In debating what to do there, some argue that Iraq was just as corrupt, yet the surge still worked. Was Iraq just as corrupt? It looks like it. Both countries are ranked near the bottom of the Corruption Perception Index: Iraq at 178 and Afghanistan at 176...
Clueless In Quito
Posted on October 14, 2009Our assigned subject is bribery abroad. So naturally some have wondered why we haven't talked about Chevron's legal tangle in Ecuador and accusations it might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act there. A couple of readers -- apparently from Ecuador -- even sent us what they said was evidence against the American oil company...
Bourke Denied New Trial
Posted on October 13, 2009Frederic Bourke's attempt to overturn his conviction and obtain a new trial has failed. He was found guilty in July of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act under 18 U.S.C. § 371 and making false statements in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001...
Bourke Injured, Sentencing Delayed
Posted on October 13, 2009Frederic Bourke's sentencing has been rescheduled to November 10, 2009 at 2:30 pm. Judge Shira Scheindlin in the federal district court in Manhattan ordered the four week delay last week. Bourke underwent surgery almost two weeks ago to repair a "ruptured distal biceps tendon in his left arm...
A Record Of Reform
Posted on October 12, 2009In September 1977, the U.S. House of Representatives finished debating a bill designated as H.R. 3815. Its working title was the Unlawful Corporate Payments Act of 1977, or UCPA. The bill was a response to a huge scandal. As the record of the House debate explained:"More than 400 corporations have admitted making questionable or illegal payments...
Charity Without Fear
Posted on October 11, 2009The question most asked by our readers during the past year was this: What does the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act say about charitable contributions? It comes up so often because all American and U.S. public companies are subject to the FCPA's antibribery provisions, and most have citizenship programs overseas that involve supporting public and private charitable causes...
Bourke's Big Day
Posted on October 08, 2009Frederic Bourke, the wealthy entrepreneur convicted in July of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Travel Act, and lying to FBI agents, is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday, October 13. At his trial, a federal jury in Manhattan found that he invested in Czech-born promoter Viktor Kozeny's unsuccessful attempt in 1998 to gain control of Azerbaijan's state oil company, Socar, despite knowing Kozeny planned to bribe Azeri leaders...
Keeping Courts Clean
Posted on October 07, 2009Compliance programs don't always (or even usually) cover how overseas counsel are hired, supervised and paid. But they should. A year ago, the Supreme Court denied cert in U.S. v. Kay, leaving in place the Justice Department's expansive view of the FCPA's business nexus element (the meaning of "assist in obtaining or retaining business")...
Grease For Oil
Posted on October 05, 2009Larry Buterman (left) from Chadbourne & Parke's New York office sent us an article he published in the Bloomberg Law Reports. It explains why the Justice Department's enforcement actions in the U.N. oil for food cases don't allege antibribery offenses under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Wages And War
Posted on October 04, 2009Corruption, of all things, may be the deciding factor in Washington's debate about troop deployment and military strategy in Afghanistan. The Christian Science Monitor said last week: "The concern is that the Afghan government has become so rotted with corruption that it cannot consolidate the gains the U...
Enforcement Report For Q3 '09
Posted on October 01, 2009During the third quarter, we counted Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions involving nine individuals and five corporations. Among the developments: Three FCPA-related trials were completed, all ending badly for the defendants (Bourke, Jefferson and Green)...
AGCO Resolves Iraq Bribe Charges
Posted on September 30, 2009Agricultural equipment-maker AGCO Corporation will pay nearly $20 million in criminal and civil penalties to resolve bribery charges related to kickbacks it paid under the U.N. oil for food program. The Duluth, Ga.-based firm agreed with the Justice Department to pay a criminal penalty of $1...
SFO To Request Prosecution Of BAE
Posted on September 30, 2009The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office announced today that it intends to seek the Attorney General's consent to prosecute BAE Systems for offenses relating to overseas corruption. The agency said it will submit its request to the Attorney General "when the SFO considers it is ready to proceed...
Breakthrough In Britain
Posted on September 29, 2009British firm Mabey & Johnson Ltd was sentenced last week by an English court for overseas corruption and violations of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The bridge-building specialist will pay £6.6 million in criminal fines and related assessments...
Supply-Side Corruption
Posted on September 28, 2009The 2008 Bribe Payers Index (BPI) from Transparency International attempts to measure how much corruption the major economies export to other countries. TI hired Gallup International to survey 2,742 executives from 26 countries (at least 100 interviews per country) between 5 August and 29 October 2008...
The Statecraft Of Enforcement
Posted on September 27, 2009Should the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act be used to punish nations that don't behave the way the United States wants them to? Michael Jacobson (left) from the Washington Institute thinks so. In the September 24 issue of Policy Watch, he proposes targeted enforcement of the FCPA against non-U...
Stuck In The Middle
Posted on September 24, 2009Evan Osnos's latest Letter from China in the New Yorker (here) describes what he calls the gift-imperative -- the constant cultural pressure to give gifts and accept them in business and professional settings. Our most harrowing encounter with the gift-imperative happened not in China but in Southeast Asia...
Found In Translation
Posted on September 23, 2009As posted yesterday on the wrageblog here, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is now available in Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. The translations come from the U.S. Department of Commerce through a project headed by Senior Counsel Kathryn Nickerson...
The Fugitive Files, Part III
Posted on September 22, 2009When Suleiman A. Nassar was indicted in 1994 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, he was a regional vice president of Lockheed International living near Geneva, Switzerland. His territory for Lockheed included Egypt, and in the late 1980s he landed a nice sale there -- three C-130 military cargo planes worth $79 million...
The Flesh-And-Blood Bond
Posted on September 21, 2009The Chinese Communist Party's latest anti-corruption initiative will force officials to declare their assets and those of close family members. The new rules were announced at the close of the annual meeting of the party's watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection...
Dmitry Anatolyevich Has A Dream
Posted on September 20, 2009The U.K. Guardian reported last week (here) that Russian President Medvedev (left) invoked the memory of Martin Luther King when he announced his intention to clean up corruption. "We are not used to saying 'we have a dream' in my country . . . but this is my political vision...
We Get It
Posted on September 17, 2009Lawyers are trained to quibble and criminal defense lawyers do it best. After all, their job is to create reasonable doubt. So it's no surprise that when talking about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, they say how complicated the law is, how technically challenging and obscure, how poorly drafted and badly organized it is...
The Bongo System
Posted on September 16, 2009The New York Times' Adam Nossiter has written a terrific article about kleptocracy and corruption in Gabon (here). Here's how his account begins:LIBREVILLE, Gabon ? In the airport duty-free store, the wine is upward of $400. The service at the fancy French restaurants in the chic Louis district is immaculate, and at the luxury hotel on the sea the call girls dress like fashion models...
The Press v. Corruption
Posted on September 15, 2009In its landmark 2002 study, The right to tell: The role of mass media in economic development (here), the World Bank said a free press contributes to cleaner governments, and also to better education, improved public health, lower infant mortality rates, and higher incomes...
Greens Found Guilty
Posted on September 14, 2009Here's the text of the Government's press release:Issued on Monday, September 14 at 10:10 a.m. PDTLOS ANGELES ? Two West Hollywood film executives have been found guilty of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in relation to a sophisticated bribery scheme that enabled the defendants to obtain a series of Thai government contracts, including valuable contracts to manage and operate Thailand's yearly film festival...
No Hollywood Ending
Posted on September 14, 2009An LA jury needed not days but hours to convict the husband-and-wife movie producers of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They were also found guilty on related charges, including conspiracy, money laundering, and tax cheating. Now they're facing what amounts to life in prison...
The Greens, BAE And More
Posted on September 13, 2009A seven-man, five-woman federal jury in LA on Friday began deliberating the fate of the husband-and-wife movie producers accused of bribing a Thai official. Gerald Green, 77, and his wife Patricia, 54, were tried for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and violating the FCPA...
Corruption Hits The Road
Posted on September 10, 2009An AP story this week (here) quoted Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov as saying, "We'll never solve the problem of traffic under [Moscow mayor Yuri] Luzhkov, no matter how much money is allocated for road construction. The exorbitant prices are directly linked to corruption and ties between road builders and authorities...
Another Alba-Related Investigation
Posted on September 09, 2009The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (here) that the Justice Department is "investigating payments that Bahraini prosecutors allege were made by units of Japanese commodities-trading giant Sojitz Group to employees of an aluminum producer in Bahrain...
The Face Of A Fugitive
Posted on September 08, 2009He's the only FCPA fugitive with his own wanted poster. That's how we know Frerik Pluimers is a big guy -- six three, two hundred thirty-five pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. Born September 30, 1946. Netherlands passport number W118268941. Indicted in April 1998, when he was president and CEO of New Jersey-based Saybolt International -- charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Travel Act, aiding and abetting and conspiracy...
Friends And Neighbors
Posted on September 07, 2009These are good days for FCPA junkies like us. More is written now about enforcement and compliance in a week than used to appear in a year. And a lot of it is original and well outside the conventional wisdom. Among the people producing work in that category (and who have appeared on the FCPA Blog before) are:David Hess, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's business school...
Guilty Plea In UK Bribe Case
Posted on September 03, 2009The former director of sales and marketing for Pacific Consolidated Industries (PCI) admitted yesterday that he bribed an official from the U.K. Ministry of Defense (MOD) in return for equipment orders. Leo Winston Smith, 73, pleaded guilty in the U.S...
Pfizer, Pharmas And The FCPA
Posted on September 02, 2009Will drug makers be the target of the next industry-wide Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation, following in the footsteps of the oil and gas services companies and orthopedic device makers? It's possible. Their sales practices are in the news a lot these days...
The FCPA's Most Wanted
Posted on September 01, 2009People charged with a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-related offense either cop a plea or fight the case in court. Except for those who choose the third option. They run. If they're living outside the U.S. when indicted, they might plan to never come back...
Ehud Olmert And The FCPA
Posted on August 31, 2009Will the American businessman implicated in Israel's political corruption scandal be charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? Morris Talansky has said that over nearly a decade he gave Israel's former prime minister, Ehud Olmert (left), envelopes stuffed with cash that was used to fund political campaigns and pay for personal expenses...
Former Faro Salesman Settles With SEC
Posted on August 30, 2009The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled enforcement action Friday against Oscar H. Meza, the former sales director in Asia for Faro Technologies, Inc. Florida-based Faro designs, develops, and markets software and portable computerized measurement devices...
Greed, Corruption And Deceit, Feds Say
Posted on August 27, 2009The trial of the husband-and-wife movie producers accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act opened this week in LA. Gerald Green, 77, and his wife Patricia, 54, have pleaded not guilty to all 22 counts of a second superseding indictment. They're charged with conspiracy to violate the FCPA and with substantive FCPA offenses...
People Without Laws
Posted on August 26, 2009The following was sent to us by an active-duty officer in the U.S. military:One of the conceits of the corrupt is that they'll be able to manage the day of their own reckoning. Lies can be covered with more lies. Blame can be shifted to others. The public will forgive us for our good intentions...
Indicted: Taking Aim At Individuals
Posted on August 25, 2009It's not just about corporations anymore. FCPA enforcement is now about individuals too -- and in a big way. Here's this year's FCPA roll call of real people: Gerald and Patricia Green, whose Foreign Corrupt Practices Act trial opened in LA this week...
Helping Doctors Cheat
Posted on August 24, 2009From an August 19 AP story: Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline used a sophisticated ghostwriting program to promote its antidepressant Paxil, allowing doctors to take credit for medical journal articles mainly written by company consultants, according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press...
FCPA Liability Keeps Growing
Posted on August 23, 2009In late July, the SEC filed a settled enforcement action against Nature's Sunshine Products Inc. (NSP), its Chief Executive Officer Douglas Faggioli. 54, and its former Chief Financial Officer Craig D. Huff, 53. The charges involved bribes by NSP's Brazilian subsidiary to customs officials and false accounting to conceal the payments...
Tinseltown, Bourke Again, And Margaritaville
Posted on August 20, 2009More on the Greens. In February 2008 we said: "We're not privy to the Greens' defense, of course, but they appear to have a tough legal battle ahead of them." Their trial was postponed this week as it was about to begin. According to the AP, the Justice Department blamed the one-week delay on "the availability of a prosecution witness...
The SEC Spreads The Love
Posted on August 19, 2009Millipore's announcement last week was unusual. The Massachusetts-based life science firm said in its 10-Q that the SEC won't bring an enforcement action for potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations the company self-reported in 2006. "By its letter on May 14, 2009," Millipore said, "the Securities and Exchange Commission notified us that its investigation has been completed and it will not pursue any enforcement action on this matter...
Top Eyes On Russian Graft
Posted on August 18, 2009When they met in July, Presidents Obama and Medvedev not only dressed alike, they created a Bilateral Presidential Commission. They'll chair it and Secretary of State Clinton and Foreign Minister Lavrov will act as coordinators. Working groups under the commission's umbrella will include energy, security, environment, arms control, counter-terrorism, cultural exchanges, and -- the reason we're talking about it -- business development...
The Feds Should Take A Meeting
Posted on August 17, 2009Husband-and-wife movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green are now on trial in LA for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Prosecutors allege they paid more than $1.8 million in bribes to Juthamas Siriwan, a former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, in return for $14 million in contracts to stage the Bangkok Film Festival...
China's Execs In The Crosshairs
Posted on August 16, 2009Offering or paying bribes to Chinese officials and local employees puts the hosts at enormous risk. A case in point may be Control Components Inc. (CCI). When it pleaded guilty in late July to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Travel Act, it admitted bribing employees from at least six Chinese state-owned companies: Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corp...
Juiced Up Enforcement
Posted on August 12, 2009For those who missed the FCPA enforcement news during the recent hyper-active stretch, here's what happened:July 28 -- Label-maker Avery Dennison Corporation resolved civil and administrative charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC filed settled enforcement actions in the United States District Court for the Central District of California charging Avery with violating the FCPA's books and records and internal controls provisions...
An Abundance Of Caution
Posted on August 11, 2009The Justice Department last week issued its first Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Opinion Procedure Release of the year. No. 09-01 concerns a medical device maker wanting to introduce its product to a foreign government. The Requestor is a U.S. company that's a "domestic concern" -- which probably means a privately-held firm...
Prosecuting Private Overseas Corruption
Posted on August 10, 2009Hold on. When did the United States criminalize commercial overseas bribery? We're not talking about bribes to foreign officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.* But bribes overseas to private parties. When did that become a federal offense? Well, it happened this year when the Justice Department indicted California valve-maker Control Components Inc...
More Heat Coming
Posted on August 09, 2009The head of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, Robert Khuzamii, said last week the agency will put more attention on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Among five specialized enforcement units to be created will be one devoted to the FCPA. He said:The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit will focus on new and proactive approaches to identifying violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act, which prohibits U...
Measuring Compliance
Posted on August 06, 2009After a public company finds evidence of illegal payments overseas, there are decisions to make. Should the board launch an internal investigation? Should the company self-report its findings to the DOJ and SEC? What about a public disclosure? Before those decisions are made, though, there's usually a discussion about "materiality...
Jefferson Convicted of Conspiracy to Violate the FCPA
Posted on August 05, 2009William Jefferson, the former nine-term congressman from Louisiana, was found guilty of 11 of 16 corruption charges on Wednesday by a federal jury, including conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He was acquitted of a substantive charge of violating the FCPA...
Here Comes The SFO, Part Two
Posted on August 04, 2009The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office is supposed to prosecute overseas corruption. But its track record has been weak. Last month, however, it announced a break-through enforcement action against Mabey & Johnson (here). We wondered if that case could mark the emergence of an energized Serious Fraud Office...
Panalpina Hit With FCPA-Related Shareholder Suit
Posted on August 03, 2009An investment fund that owns about 5% of Panalpina World Transport (Holding) Ltd filed suit on July 23, 2009 in the Southern District of Texas against the company, some current and former officers and directors, and its owner before its 2005 IPO in Switzerland...
Hollywood FCPA Trial Set To Open
Posted on August 02, 2009The year's third Foreign Corrupt Practices Act trial is scheduled to start on Tuesday when the husband-and-wife movie producers arrested in 2007 face a federal jury in Los Angeles. Prosecutors allege that Gerald and Patricia Green paid more than $1.8 million in bribes to a former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand in return for $14 million in contracts to stage the Bangkok Film Festival...
Canadian Indicted For Iraq Bribes
Posted on August 01, 2009The Justice Department said Friday that a Canadian citizen has been indicted for his alleged role in an eight-year conspiracy to defraud the United Nations Oil for Food Program (OFFP) and to bribe Iraqi government officials in connection with the sale of a chemical additive used in refining leaded fuel...
Guilty Plea By Control Components
Posted on July 31, 2009Valve-maker Control Components Inc. (CCI) of Rancho Santa Margarita, California pleaded guilty Friday to violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (15 U.S.C. §78dd-2) and the Travel Act (18 U.S. C. §1952). It admitted bribing foreign officials in a decade-long scheme to secure contracts in about 36 countries...
SEC Settles With Nature's Sunshine, Two Officers
Posted on July 31, 2009The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled enforcement against Nature's Sunshine Products Inc. (NSP), its Chief Executive Officer Douglas Faggioli. 54, and its former Chief Financial Officer Craig D. Huff, 53. According to the SEC, the charges relate to cash payments made in 2000 and 2001 by the Brazilian subsidiary of NSP, a manufacturer of nutritional and personal care products, to import unregistered products into Brazil and the subsequent falsification of its books and records to conceal the payments...
Driller Resolves FCPA Charges
Posted on July 30, 2009Oil and gas driller Helmerich & Payne Inc. (H&P) will pay a $1 million criminal penalty to the Justice Department and disgorge to the Securities and Exchange Commission $320,604 plus prejudgment interest of $55,077.22 to settle Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations related to improper payments to government officials in Argentina and Venezuela...
Avery Dennison Settles China-Related Violations
Posted on July 28, 2009Label-maker Avery Dennison Corporation, whose compliance problems in China were described in an LA Times story last January, has resolved civil and administrative charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.The SEC filed settled enforcement actions in the United States District Court for the Central District of California charging Avery with violating the FCPA's books and records and internal controls provisions...
Over There
Posted on July 28, 2009Our subject is usually corruption overseas. But it's impossible to ignore the news these days from New Jersey. Arrested earlier this month -- 44 people, including three mayors and two state legislators. So what's the cause of all that alleged home-grown graft?There are lessons from the Third World...
Jefferson's Case Heads To The Jury
Posted on July 27, 2009His defense took just two hours to present. Now, according to the Times Picayune, the jury will hear closing arguments today (Tuesday) and begin deliberations Tuesday or Wednesday on William Jefferson's fate. Here's how the paper began its report of the final day of testimony:In a moment of courtroom drama Thursday, the prosecutors in the corruption trial of William Jefferson withdrew their objections and let the former New Orleans congressman's attorneys play nearly 90 minutes of secretly taped recordings that the defense team said was crucial to his case...
Getting Loud For Justice
Posted on July 26, 2009It's been awhile since we beat the drum about respondeat superior (here). But that's OK. A a couple of very smart guys have been doing it for us. They're Stanley A. Twardy Jr., a former U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, and Daniel E. Wenner, a former Assistant U...
Here Comes The SFO, Part One
Posted on July 23, 2009The last time we had a serious discussion about the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office was to report its thrashing in June 2008 by a former American prosecutor. Jessica de Grazia, who'd been an assistant district attorney in Manhattan for 13 years, was hired by the U...
Caribbean Corruption Report Leaked
Posted on July 22, 2009WikiLeaks -- the site that publishes documents that are "classified, censored or otherwise opaque to the public record" -- has posted the suppressed final report of the Turks and Caicos Islands Commission of Inquiry. Based on the commission's findings, the British government said in June it would suspend the territory's political institutions and impose direct rule...
Seal This . . .
Posted on July 20, 2009Nearly everything in the court's electronic record of James Giffen's criminal prosecution is beyond reach. Almost 200 pleadings and orders are in the docket but only a dozen can be viewed or downloaded, and the indictment isn't one of them. It's sealed tight, buttoned down, locked up...
Back To Bourke
Posted on July 19, 2009The inbox brought a surprise from a generous reader -- the jury instructions Judge Scheindlin issued in Frederic Bourke's case. We talked earlier about the "knowledge" element of an FCPA offense and the two kinds of "knowledge" the government can prove: What the defendant actually knows and what he or she should know under the circumstances...
The Iron Ore War
Posted on July 16, 2009The Chinese government this week alleged that employees of Rio Tinto bribed executives from 16 Chinese steel mills that buy its iron ore for themselves and China's 120 steel producers. Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto is among the world's largest iron ore miners and has been a major supplier to China's steel industry, which is mostly state-owned...
James Giffen And America's Secrets
Posted on July 15, 2009In the 1990s, according to the Justice Department, American businessman James Giffen had the title of counselor to the president of Kazakhstan. His job was to help with "priority investment projects relating to the exploration, development, production, transportation, and processing of oil and gas...
The Rule Of Brutality
Posted on July 14, 2009Evan Osnos' Letter from China in last week's New Yorker included this excerpt from a piece circulating in China (in Chinese only) about the violence in Xinjiang. It's attributed to Zhong Dajun, described as a prominent economic consultant and former editor at the China Economic Times:This problem arises from the corruption of the government...
Knowing What You Don't Know
Posted on July 13, 2009Prosecutors told the jury during Frederic Bourke's trial that instead of doing adequate due diligence for his investment in Viktor Kozeny's Azerbaijan privatization scheme, he'd "stuck his head in the sand." It may not sound like legal jargon but the "head-in-the-sand" phrase pops up often in criminal law and appears prominently in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's legislative history...
Bourke's Verdict: Only In America
Posted on July 11, 2009Nowhere else in the world would Frederic Bourke have been prosecuted on the facts of his case. His crime was to invest in a deal in a far-off country where he knew or should have known that bribes would be paid. Prosecutors said he stuck his head in the sand...
Bourke Convicted
Posted on July 10, 2009Frederic Bourke was convicted on Friday of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and lying to FBI agents. He was acquitted of money laundering. The judge has already said she will impose less than the 10-year maximum sentence prosecutors have asked for...
Spending Siemens' Money
Posted on July 09, 2009Last week the World Bank announced that Siemens will pay $100 million over the next 15 years to settle corruption charges involving a project in Russia. The money is supposed to go to anti-corruption groups, for compliance training and education programs, as well as helping governments recover assets stolen by crooked leaders...
Those Are Fighting Words
Posted on July 08, 2009Whoa. Did that guy just say the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act causes corruption and hurts poor people? What kind of person would talk that way? Doesn't he know how the FCPA spreads the good news of American business ethics to the four corners of the planet? That he's attacking a law that, as Jeffrey Garten once told us, falls into the same category as mom and apple pie?But here's the thing...
A Russian Crusader Dies
Posted on July 07, 2009One of Russia's leading anti-corruption journalists died last week from head wounds received two months ago in an attack outside his home. Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, 63, ran the paper Korruptsia i Prestupnost (Corruption and Crime) in Rostov-on-Don. The local media had reported that he either was in a brawl or fell down the stairs...
Be The One Millionth Caller . . .
Posted on July 06, 2009China's new nationwide anti-corruption hotline mentioned earlier is off to a good start. Too good, in fact. During the first week more than 11,000 calls jammed the phones. The China Daily said only one in five calls connected to the hotline because its ten operators were overwhelmed...
In Jefferson's Case, What Gives?
Posted on July 05, 2009Here's the question: Is William Jefferson still on trial for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? His indictment included an FCPA count and the cash found in his freezer was supposed to be evidence of an antibribery offense. But the ex-congressman's trial has been going on for a few weeks now and we haven't heard anything about the FCPA...
More Caribbean Controversy
Posted on July 01, 2009Tiny Antigua -- the adopted home of Sir Allen Stanford -- isn't the only Caribbean hide-away that's in the news these days for the wrong reasons. There's also its even-tinier neighbor, the Turks and Caicos Islands.In April, a U.K. report alleged systematic corruption among Turks and Caicos' leading politicians and their friends...
Enforcement Report For Q2 '09
Posted on June 30, 2009During the second quarter there were, by our count, eleven Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions. They involved four companies -- three firms resolved criminal or civil charges, or both, and one disclosed an investigation -- and 13 individuals who were either indicted, put on trial, pleaded guilty or sentenced...
Guilty Plea In Vietnam Bribery Case
Posted on June 29, 2009A former executive of a Philadelphia-based export company pleaded guilty Monday to being part of a conspiracy to bribe Vietnamese government officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.Joseph T. Lukas, 60, a resident of New Jersey, was a partner in Nexus Technologies Inc...
Writing Modern History
Posted on June 28, 2009An extended interview in this month's Guernica with Michela Wrong is great reading. She's the British journalist who's current book is It?s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower. In the book and the interview, she uses the story of John Githongo to talk about the root causes of corruption in Africa, digging deep into tribalism, colonialism and western aid...
Will Graft Defeat Iraq?
Posted on June 25, 2009We like to end our weeks around here with a light touch. But not today. We just read a disturbing story from Reuters' Aseel Kami in the Washington Post. He describes the "pandemic of corruption" now gripping Iraq. After all that's happened there, it's a terrible blow...
A Billion Calls Later . . .
Posted on June 24, 2009We admit it. Praise for China's perennial anti-corruption campaigns doesn't fall easily from our lips. There are always questions about the numbers the central government tosses around ("prosecutors nationwide prosecuted 8,939 officials for duty dereliction in 2008, up 5...
More Journalists Murdered In The Philippines
Posted on June 23, 2009Anti-corruption journalists in the Philippines are under siege. Two were killed in the same week this month. The latest victim was newspaper commentator Antonio Castillo. He was shot on June 12 by two gunmen on a motorcycle in the central Philippines town of Uson, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility...
Russian Headwinds Hit Investors
Posted on June 22, 2009Russia -- the world's largest country by land mass, with 11 time zones and 142,000,000 people, one of five permanent members on the UN Security Council, member of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations, and possessor of the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet -- yes, that Russia, ranks 120th on the World Bank's Doing Business Index (here), one spot above Nepal...
Sir Allen's FCPA Mystery
Posted on June 21, 2009The Texas billionaire with a Caribbean knighthood and a passion for cricket was charged by U.S. prosecutors on Friday with running a "massive ponzi scheme" through his bank in Antigua. Allen Stanford, 59, faces 21 charges that could send him to prison for 250 years, including mail and wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to mislead the Securities and Exchange Commission...
The Friday Round Up
Posted on June 18, 2009Reports from the BBC and the Straits Times say the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is trying once again to get rid of secret accounts held by local officials. Known as "little coffers," the money is skimmed from public funds. The CCP directed party and government officials to disclose the accounts or face severe punishment...
Witnesses Hit Bourke And Jefferson
Posted on June 17, 2009From Frederic Bourke's Trial. Outstanding coverage on the testimony this week of Hans Bodmer, Viktor Kozeny's Swiss lawyer, from the Courthouse News Service here and Bloomberg's David Glovin here.From Glovin's account:Bodmer, who is testifying for prosecutors in exchange for leniency and admits knowing of the bribery scheme, testified yesterday that he told Bourke about the payments...
It's All Good For Sun
Posted on June 16, 2009In May, a month after it agreed to be acquired by Oracle for $7.4 billion, Sun Microsystems said it may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and that the violations could have a material effect on its business. It launched an internal investigation and shared the results with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission...
Jefferson's Judge Keeps Things Moving
Posted on June 15, 2009Opening arguments in the trial of former congressman William Jefferson for corruption and violating the FCPA start today. During the three days of jury selection last week, the tone from the bench was no-nonsense. A Louisiana TV station carried this revealing report:One potential juror who was interviewed told the court she believed ?large sums of money in a freezer is odd...
The Death Of A Long-Time Leader
Posted on June 14, 2009Gabon's president, Omar Bongo, 73, died last week of heart failure while in Spain on a holiday. In 1967, when he was just 31, he became the country's second post-colonial ruler. He went on to be Africa's longest-serving head of state.Outside Gabon -- a West African country with about a million and a half people and lots of oil -- he was generally seen as a force for stability and regional peace...
Are DOJ Releases Too Public?
Posted on June 11, 2009It's been nearly a year since the last Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Opinion Procedure Release. And we're wondering why. Release 08-03 was published in July 2008. Since then, nothing.As background, the FCPA Opinion Procedure Regulations 28 CFR Part 80 say any issuer or domestic concern can ask the Justice Department whether a proposed transaction would violate the FCPA...
More On Bourke and Jefferson
Posted on June 10, 2009First Frederic Bourke. A witness testifying for the government this week may have hurt the prosecution's case. Christine Rastas, who worked for Viktor Kozeny in Azerbaijan, said her boss told Egyptian businessman Shafik Gabr about bribing Azeri officials...
Liberia's Graft-Busting Leader
Posted on June 09, 2009We've never heard of an African head of state asking the U.S. to deny visas to individuals suspected of corruption. Until now, that is. It happened on Friday when Liberia's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (left), "pleaded with the Government of the United States of America not to give U...
Big Day For The FCPA
Posted on June 08, 2009History will be made with today's opening gavel in William Jefferson's federal trial. It will mark the first time a former member of congress has been prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the only time the country has seen two FCPA trials staged simultaneously -- Jefferson's in Alexandria, Virginia and Frederic Bourke's in New York City...
More Disclosure, Less Graft
Posted on June 07, 2009CoST -- the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative --- has a simple aim: to disclose in real-time critical information about public-sector construction projects. Why? To prevent corruption, which can't live in the sunshine.One of CoST's backers is the World Bank...
Defense Contractor, Ex-Exec Settle Charges
Posted on June 04, 2009The Securities and Exchange Commission last week filed settled enforcement actions against United Industrial Corporation (UIC), an aerospace and defense systems contractor, and Thomas Wurzel, the former President of UIC's one-time subsidiary, ACL Technologies, Inc...
Jefferson On Trial, Soon
Posted on June 03, 2009Former Congressman William J. Jefferson's trial for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other federal laws will start on June 9 in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge Tim Ellis this week granted Jefferson a one-week delay. He's charged in a 16-count indictment with violating the FCPA, soliciting and accepting bribes, wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice...
Another FCPA Derivative Suit Is Tossed
Posted on June 02, 2009For the third time, Baker Hughes has beaten back a derivative suit based on its 2007 settlement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. It paid $44 million to resolve enforcement actions by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission related to bribery in Kazakhstan...
The Book On Bourke's Judge
Posted on June 01, 2009Last week we said Judge Shira Scheindlin's preliminary rulings would protect Frederic Bourke's right to a fair trial. That, it turns out, is something she's already known for. Another defendant, John "Junior" Gotti, the alleged New York City mobster, has had three trials in her courtroom since 2005...
Bourke's Trial Is The FCPA's Big Show
Posted on May 31, 2009There have only been a few Foreign Corrupt Practices Act trials over the years, so Frederic Bourke's is unusual to start with. What's more, this case has plenty of special ingredients. Bourke, 63, is rich. He lives in the tony towns of Greenwich and Aspen...
China's Runaway Bribe-Takers
Posted on May 28, 2009One defense strategy adopted by some of the Chinese officials accused of corruption is to leave the country. More than 800 have bolted, according to the government, and around 300 have returned. Journalists say the number of international fugitives is a lot higher?at least 1,000 and probably more...
Court Rulings Protect Bourke's Rights
Posted on May 27, 2009Judge Shira Scheindlin has now decided most of the pending pre-trial issues in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecution of Frederic Bourke. Her rulings generally restrict the government's use of other-acts-type evidence, while allowing Bourke latitude to tell his story...
Resignation And Reform In Russia
Posted on May 26, 2009Most Russians think the battle against corruption is already lost. More than half believe graft is an "unavoidable and permanent fact of life." And 58% say it's impossible to fight against it. The numbers come from a survey released last month by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center, reported by RIA Novosti here...
Ribadu Talks About Corruption
Posted on May 25, 2009By the fourth year of Nuhu Ribadu's term as chief graft-buster in Nigeria, his Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had secured convictions in over 275 cases. "It was modest but revolutionary," he said last week, "especially since the convictions were from cases against high?ranking officials such as the leadership of the Nigeria Police, a number of state governors, ministers, legislators and top bureaucrats...
The Quiet Revolution
Posted on May 21, 2009Here's some news you don't hear every day -- in fact, no one's heard it for the last 367 years: Britain's House of Lords this week suspended two of its members because of corruption. It's the first time a Lord has been barred since 1642.Lord Taylor of Blackburn, a peer since 1978, and Lord Truscott, who joined the upper house five years ago, agreed to put a loophole in a new tax law in exchange for a promise of cash payments...
Bourke v. The Professor
Posted on May 20, 2009When it's a bit of snoozer around here, we know what to do -- take a peek at the docket in U.S. v. Kozeny. There's plenty happening there lately, and here's the latest. It's a pleading from Frederic Bourke's lawyers that argues why the man to the left, Rajan Menon, PhD, should be barred from testifying as an expert witness for the prosecution at Bourke's trial...
Halliburton And KBR In Class Action
Posted on May 19, 2009Plaintiffs lawyers have filed a state derivative class action suit against some of the officers and directors of Halliburton and its one-time subsidiary, KBR. The suit in Houston alleges all sorts of malfeasance -- including the Nigerian bribery that led to the companies' $579 million settlements of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses in February this year...
Second Chances And More
Posted on May 18, 2009What a difference a year or so makes. In December 2007, Lucent Technologies Inc. -- which became part of Alcatel SA in November 2006 -- settled Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges. It had illegally paid millions of dollars for Chinese officials to take more than 300 trips to the U...
Guilty Pleas In Haiti Bribery Case
Posted on May 17, 2009Two Florida men have admitted bribing employees of Haiti's state-owned telephone company in return for better rates for Miami-based communications firms.Juan Diaz, 51, of Miami, pleaded guilty Friday to a one-count criminal information. He was charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by conspiring to make corrupt payments to officials from Telecommunications D'Haiti...
Graft Allegations Against MAN
Posted on May 14, 2009Prosecutors in Munich think German truck-maker MAN AG paid bribes to customers between 2002 and 2005 of around ?14 million to boost the sales. According to recent reports (here), some of the alleged payments inside and outside Germany were concealed by being routed through bank accounts of relatives and friends of MAN employees...
FCPA Defendants Want Less Paper, More Facts
Posted on May 13, 2009Four former executives of Control Components Inc. indicted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in early April have accused the Justice Department of playing "a game of hide and seek" with its evidence against them. Stuart Carson, his wife Hong "Rose" Carson, Paul Cosgrove and David Edmonds said in a court filing this week that the government has identified only 30 of the 236 illegal payments alleged in the indictment -- not enough for them to plan their defense...
What's The Impact of Sun's FCPA Disclosure?
Posted on May 12, 2009Sun Microsystems said last week it may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It didn't reveal where the payments might have occurred or how much the bribes amounted to. But it said the potential offenses, which it has reported to U.S. and other authorities, "could possibly have a material effect on our business...
The Bourke Files: Lies, Kickbacks And Other Crimes
Posted on May 11, 2009In its prosecution of Frederic Bourke for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by helping Czech-born fugitive Viktor Kozeny bribe Azeri officials, the government plans to call at least two witnesses who have admitted their guilt in the case. Now Bourke is accusing them of committing other, previously undisclosed crimes...
Novo Nordisk Pays $18 Million In Penalties For Iraq Bribery
Posted on May 11, 2009Denmark-based Novo Nordisk A/S will pay a $9 million criminal penalty and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department for illegal kickbacks paid to the former Iraqi government under the U.N. oil-for-food program. It will also pay $3,025,066 in civil penalties and $6,005,079 in disgorgement of profits, including pre-judgment interest, to the Securities and Exchange Commission...
The Bourke Files: Poison And Prostitutes
Posted on May 10, 2009Bloomberg's David Glovin reported Friday how federal prosecutors are planning to show that Frederic Bourke, who's accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, thought his partner in their luxury handbag business was secretly trying to inject him with a "harmful substance...
C'est Magnifique!
Posted on May 07, 2009Francophile kleptocrats everywhere must be shaking in their Yves Saint Laurent double monk-strap black boots today, thanks to a Paris magistrate's ruling. He accepted a case brought by Transparency International that requires French authorities to investigate how three African rulers, their family members and friends managed to acquire numerous luxury homes, cars and other assets in France...
Iraq's Lawsuit Legacy
Posted on May 06, 2009In July 2008, the government of Iraq launched a massive FCPA-related federal lawsuit in New York City. We first talked about it here. The complaint named 93 defendants in claims alleging bribery and fraud under the now-defunct United Nations oil-for-food program...
Crime And Corruption In The Spice Islands
Posted on May 05, 2009The head of Indonesia's anti-corruption agency was arrested Monday for murdering a prominent local businessman. Antasari Azhar, 56, chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission or KPK, is accused of killing a rival in a love-triangle. The woman is alleged to be a 22-year-old golf caddy who was working at a club in Azhar's neighborhood...
When Is It OK To Pay?
Posted on May 04, 2009The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act doesn't prohibit all payments to foreign officials. It's not that broad. What it does prohibit are corrupt payments made to obtain or retain business.Which means the application of the law isn't necessarily black and white...
Another Whistleblower Blow-Up
Posted on May 03, 2009An ex-AIG lawyer sued the company on Friday in federal court in New York City. Kimberly Lebron claimed she was fired after complaining to AIG brass about their plan to sponsor a six week trip by an official from Korea Post. She said the arrangement was a quid pro quo for a $50 million investment by Korea Post in an AIG real estate fund and would violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
I-Fighting Corruption
Posted on April 30, 2009Does the Internet have a role to play in the battle against graft? It's still early, but the signs are promising.For public corruption to flourish, a couple of ingredients are necessary -- red tape and opaque decision-making. The Internet can reduce both...
Dirty Diamonds And The FCPA
Posted on April 29, 2009We've all heard of the people who call 911 to report that their cocaine's just been stolen. Well, something similar happened here -- under terrible circumstances.The case in federal bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York is called In re Mark Allen Kalisch...
Catching Corrupt Lawyers, Part II
Posted on April 28, 2009A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. -- Mario PuzoWith that street-smart aphorism in mind, we went looking for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-related cases where lawyers were alleged to be on the wrong side of the law...
Catching Corrupt Lawyers, Part I
Posted on April 27, 2009Two professional groups say they'll punish any lawyers involved in KBR's $182 million scheme to bribe Nigerian officials in exchange for contracts worth $6 billion.A past president of the International Bar Association (IBA) visiting Nigeria last week reportedly "threatened to use its internal disciplinary mechanism to punish accordingly any of its members indicted in the scandal," according to a story in the Nigerian press (here)...
An African Voice Is Silenced
Posted on April 26, 2009The FBI will help Burundi investigate the murder two weeks ago of one of the country's most prominent anti-corruption activists. Ernest Manirumva was vice-president of OLUCOME (the Anti-Corruption and Economic Malpractice Observatory), arguably Burundi's most important NGO...
Passing The Test
Posted on April 23, 2009We talked a week ago about Somali pirates and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We're on the subject of piracy again, but we can't pretend this post is on topic. That's OK, though -- on Fridays we have a license to wander a bit. So here's what's on our mind...
Right Issue, Wrong Side?
Posted on April 22, 2009When graft-busting becomes a political weapon, the rule of law grows weaker and corruption generally flourishes. Is that what's happening in Venezuela? Maybe. For sure the number of high-profile opposition leaders accused of bribery and corruption is growing...
One-Way Waivers
Posted on April 21, 2009There was an important post over the weekend on the White Collar Crime Prof Blog. Ellen Podgor flagged a recent case (here) with serious implications for companies with deferred prosecution agreements.An April 17, 2009 opinion from the DC Court of Appeals in US v...
In Step With The DOJ
Posted on April 20, 2009What does it mean to "cooperate with the government" after discovering serious Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance problems? There's a description of organizational cooperation in a recent sentencing memo the Justice Department filed in US v. Latin Node Inc...
Busting Graft From The Other Side
Posted on April 19, 2009It perennially runs neck-and-neck with Louisiana as the country's most corrupt state. But last week Illinois took a big step toward coming clean. It launched a website that makes it easy for anyone to report corruption in state and local government -- and get paid to do it...
Paying The Pirates
Posted on April 16, 2009This month's online edition of Foreign Policy magazine has an article (here) saying Somali pirates hand over part of their proceeds to the regional Puntland government in exchange for being allowed to operate in areas it controls.So what? Stay with us a minute...
More On The Monitors
Posted on April 15, 2009Ah, Spring. And the corporate compliance monitors are back in the news. Here's what's happening:It's an annual event. Democrats in Congress have re-introduced a bill from last summer to regulate the way monitors are selected, paid and held accountable...
That's Not Justice
Posted on April 14, 2009A former U.S. Attorney told us a few years ago: "The Justice Department has found a way to subcontract out its FCPA investigations. Now the company lawyers are taking the statements and doing the document work. It's great for the government but really bad for the employees...
Around The Horn
Posted on April 13, 2009He wasn't kidding. Last week's record-setting indictment under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of six individuals from one company highlights the Justice Department's strategy to target people, not just companies. In September last year, Mark Mendelsohn -- the DOJ official responsible for FCPA criminal prosecutions -- told an audience: The number of individual prosecutions has risen ? and that?s not an accident...
Bourke Prepares His Defense
Posted on April 12, 2009Frederic Bourke is taking video testimony from a critically ill friend that may help prove Bourke was an innocent victim of a massive investment fraud perpetrated by Viktor Kozeny. Bourke, 62, goes on trial June 1 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Rocket Scientist Sentenced To Prison
Posted on April 08, 2009The Virginia-based physicist who sold controlled space-launch technology to China by bribing government officials there has been sentenced to 51 months in prison. Shu Quan-Sheng (left), 68, a native of China, naturalized U.S. citizen and PhD physicist, pleaded guilty in November 2008 to one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and two counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act...
Six More Indicted In Valve-Maker Case
Posted on April 08, 2009In the biggest multiple-party indictment yet under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, six more former executives of Control Components Inc., an Orange County, Calif.-based valve company, were charged yesterday with a decade-long conspiracy to win contracts by bribing officials at foreign state-owned companies...
Dear BAE And Prince Bandar: You're Boring
Posted on April 07, 2009That, at least, is the verdict from Tony Perry of the LA Times in his review of "Frontline: Black Money." The PBS documentary by Lowell Bergman and Oriana Zill de Granados features the story of BAE and the Saudi Prince. Perry says the show "is first-class journalism: high-minded, fact-filled and balanced, with some eye-catching visuals...
Latin Node Inc. Pleads Guilty
Posted on April 07, 2009Latin Node Inc. (Latinode), formerly a privately held Florida corporation, pleaded guilty on April 7, 2009 to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with improper payments in Honduras and Yemen, the Justice Department has announced...
What's Being Lost?
Posted on April 06, 2009No one blames the The New York Times Company. If the only way it can save the New York Times itself is by shutting down the Boston Globe, then the owner's choice is easy. And no one blames the management at the Globe either. The paper hasn't been badly run; it's just become very unprofitable over the past decade -- like most other big-city newspapers in the United States...
GE Resolves FCPA-Related Private Claims
Posted on April 05, 2009General Electric and its former in-house counsel, Adriana Koeck, who claimed she was fired for telling her superiors about the company's possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in Brazil, have settled their litigation. GE had sued her for wrongfully disclosing its confidential information, while she claimed she was fired in retaliation for whistleblower activity protected by Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (18 U...
On The Side Of Justice . . .
Posted on April 02, 2009Great words from Ellen Podgor at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog (here) about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision this week to drop the prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens: This dismissal is monumental in terms of sending a message that this justice department will be very different...
Gerald Green Faces New Charge
Posted on April 01, 2009Prosecutors once again expanded the indictment against the Hollywood couple accused of bribing a Thai official in exchange for contracts to stage the Bangkok Film Festival. The second superseding indictment filed on March 11 added a charge of obstruction of justice against Gerald Green...
Enforcement Report For Q1 '09
Posted on March 31, 2009We count seven Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions since the start of the year, including indictments, pleas and settlements, along with one newly disclosed investigation. Four of the enforcement actions involve individuals, and four relate to KBR...
Kleptocrats In Court
Posted on March 30, 2009The United States fights foreign kleptocrats through Proclamation 7750, by denying them and their families U.S. visas. And through Section 314(a) of the Patriot Act, which it can use to reach out to more than 25,000 financial institutions to find accounts and transactions of anyone who may be involved in laundering kleptocratic assets...
KBR: Nigerians Tell Their Own Story
Posted on March 29, 2009A new Nigeria-based publication called Next has just posted an article (here) naming some of the officials who took bribes from KBR and its TSKJ joint venture for the $6 billion Bonny Island LNG development project. The story by Dapo Olorunyomi and Mojeed Musiliku names three former presidents among the bribe takers, including Sani Abacha, Abdusalami Abubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo...
Proclamation 7750 Unwrapped
Posted on March 26, 2009Last week, while we were looking into ways the U.S. fights foreign kleptocrats, we heard about Presidential Proclamation 7750. It was issued in 2004 and, by 2006, a high State Department official was calling it a "key tool" in America's anti-corruption arsenal...
First Look: The U.K.'s Draft Antibribery Law
Posted on March 25, 2009Britain's Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, unveiled a draft bill on March 25 that will completely overhaul the country's antibribery laws. He called the old laws anachronistic, inconsistent, unclear, and difficult for the public to understand and for prosecutors and the courts to apply...
Voices From Africa
Posted on March 24, 2009Marc Ona Essangui is from Gabon -- a west African country with lots of oil, about a million and a half people, and just two presidents since independence from France in 1960. He's the local head of the Publish What You Pay coalition, an NGO operating in 70 countries "that helps citizens of resource-rich developing countries hold their governments accountable for the management of revenues from the oil, gas and mining industries...
Unfinished Business
Posted on March 23, 2009We don't know how many of the 50 or so disclosed and pending Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations will be resolved this year. But here are some we're watching:Alcoa. In February 2008, government-owned Aluminum Bahrain BSC (Alba) accused its long-time U...
Bourke's Defense Is Revealed, Then Sealed
Posted on March 22, 2009Bloomberg's David Glovin filed a story Friday (here) reporting that Frederic Bourke will argue that he didn't violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act because there were no corrupt payments to foreign officials. Bourke, 62, was indicted in 2005 with Czech-born fugitive Viktor Kozeny, 45, for bribing government officials in Azerbaijan in a failed attempt to take over the state oil company known as Socar...
Cornering The Kleptocrats, Part I
Posted on March 19, 2009Only bribe-payers can be prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; bribe-takers are excluded. Congress wrote the FCPA that way because it believed "the efforts expended in resolving the diplomatic, jurisdictional, and enforcement difficulties that would arise upon the prosecution of foreign officials was not worth the minimal deterrent value of such prosecutions...
Combating Caribbean Corruption
Posted on March 17, 2009The U.K. government is in the process of assuming direct rule over its Caribbean dependency, the Turks and Caicos Islands. A U.K. Commission of Inquiry found "clear signs of political amorality and immaturity" in the government there. The BBC said chief minister Michael Misick is alleged to have "built up a multi-million dollar fortune since coming to power in 2003...
Paris Pulls The Plug On Enforcement
Posted on March 16, 2009We're trying to stay calm today but it's not easy. We just learned why France -- the largest country by area in the European Union and second largest by population, possessor of the fifth biggest economy in the world, a founding member of the European Union and the United Nations, a permanent member of the Security Council and member of the G8, NATO, and the Latin Union (whatever that is) -- why that France, isn't prosecuting any foreign public bribery...
The Case For More Compliance
Posted on March 15, 2009The pressure these days to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other anti-corruption laws is coming from several directions at once. Last week we mentioned whistleblower hotlines as one example. But there are other reasons why it's harder than ever for companies to cheat and for bride-taking officials to hide their crimes...
Wondering About Whistleblowers
Posted on March 12, 2009Earlier this week, we mentioned the importance of whistleblower hotlines (here). How much are they used for bribery and corruption complaints? We haven't found any recent statistics. But we think the numbers must be significant (judging by the number of open investigations everywhere)...
On The Subject Of Resources
Posted on March 11, 2009We've mentioned before Dan Newcomb's FCPA Digest, calling it the most definitive publicly-available catalog of FCPA prosecutions, enforcement actions and disclosed investigations. So it's great to see the release of the March 2009 version, available here...
Compliance Is The New Norm
Posted on March 10, 2009Raymond Fisman, left, is a professor at the Columbia Business School. In a commentary last week in Forbes titled When Corruption Is The Norm, he had this to say about Morgan Stanley's compliance problems in China: "The . . . head office has taken the view that this was the rogue act of a rogue individual, and an internal investigation revealed that 'questionable activity was isolated to a discrete set of real estate transactions in China...
A Blight On Their Lives
Posted on March 09, 2009Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times is a roving reporter with a knack for revealing the heart of things. He's done that now for the problem of petty corruption in Romania. His story is about the human consequences of the countless little bribes so often ignored and unreported, and categorized as those pesky and insignificant facilitating payments...
Kenya, Corruption And Global Security
Posted on March 08, 2009A Reuters report said FBI Director Robert Mueller made a one-day visit to Kenya last week. After meeting with the prime minister, Mueller was quoted as saying, "We discussed what could be described as the unhealthy climate of impunity here in Kenya and steps that can be taken to investigate and to prosecute public corruption...
Extending Compliance To Third Parties
Posted on February 25, 2009Law.com this week reported the results of a survey conducted by the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics (SCCE). The group sent a random survey to compliance professionals about their use of codes of conduct with third parties, such as suppliers, and received back 400 responses...
Understanding the KBR, Halliburton Charges
Posted on February 24, 2009With the Halliburton / KBR settlement in mind, we asked readers last week (here) to help us understand how decisions are made to charge companies or individuals under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with violations of the antibribery provisions -- criminally or civilly...
Following Kozeny's Money
Posted on February 23, 2009The Justice Department obtained a federal court order ten days ago against Viktor Kozeny, barring him from touching any of the proceeds from the 2001 sale of his Aspen, Colorado residence (left), amounting now to about $23 million. The government said the funds came from the money laundering offenses alleged in U...
Sir Allen And The FCPA
Posted on February 22, 2009Since hearing about Allen Stanford's cozy relationships with certain Caribbean leaders, we've wondered if he'll eventually face criminal charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Neither bribery nor the FCPA have been mentioned yet in connection with Stanford...
The Friday Report
Posted on February 19, 2009Former Congressman William J. Jefferson says the cash found in his freezer four years ago proves he didn't violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Yesterday Jefferson filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, asking for review of the Fourth Circuit's refusal to dismiss most of the corruption-related charges against him...
Waters So Deep
Posted on February 18, 2009There are things we know we don't know, said the former boss at the Pentagon. But then again, he added, there are things we don't know we don't know. That distinction came to mind as we read the latest email from a correspondent who always holds us to a high standard...
This Talk Is Not Cheap
Posted on February 17, 2009Public corruption doesn't happen in public. It needs dark places to flourish. That's why the press can play a decisive role in fighting sleaze--just by shining light on it. So the announcement this week by the Chicago Tribune that it's going all out to fight graft is welcome news...
Protecting The Privilege
Posted on February 16, 2009Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has introduced a bill "to provide appropriate protection to attorney-client privileged communications and attorney work product." S.445 is co-sponsored by Senators Carper (D-DE), Cochran (R-MS), Kerry (D-MA), Landrieu (D-LA) and McCaskill (D-MO)...
Vietnam In The News
Posted on February 15, 2009Last month we reported the conviction in a Tokyo court of three Japanes executives and their company on charges of bribing a senior Vietnamese government official. The illegal payments of $820,000 were intended to secure contracts for road projects backed by Japanese aid money...
China Deals Trigger Investigation
Posted on February 12, 2009In an SEC filing this week, Morgan Stanley disclosed (here) that it's investigating possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in China. The bank said in a short statement that "it has recently uncovered actions initiated by an employee based in China in an overseas real estate subsidiary that appear to have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Settlement In ITT China Payments Case
Posted on February 12, 2009Global conglomerate ITT Corporation settled civil Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The SEC filed a settled civil injunctive action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against New York-based ITT...
KBR and Halliburton Resolve Charges
Posted on February 11, 2009Houston-based global engineering firm Kellogg Brown & Root LLC (KBR) pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a five-count criminal information, with one conspiracy count and four substantive counts of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. KBR agreed to pay a $402 million fine, the second largest criminal fine for an FCPA violation, following Siemens' $450 million penalty in December 2008...
I'd Want My Conscience
Posted on February 10, 2009It may seem to Liberians as though everyone in their civil service is corrupt, but it's not true. There's at least one honest man. He's Richard Karyea, a former customs officer at the Roberts International Airport. Two years ago he refused a bribe from a drug smuggler worth more than 1,300 times his $15 monthly salary...
KBR's Twisted Web
Posted on February 09, 2009We've been looking over the criminal information charging Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. There's one conspiracy and four substantive counts. There's also a related document called the Joint Motion to Waive Presentence Investigation...
KBR Nears Final Plea Deal
Posted on February 06, 2009A criminal information filed in federal court in Houston on Friday shows that Kellogg, Brown & Root LLC, the Houston-based global engineering and construction firm that was once part of Halliburton, will plead guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
The DOJ Contra Mundum
Posted on February 05, 2009Six months ago, without fanfare, the Justice Department scrapped the notorious McNulty Memo. It replaced it with new guidance to federal prosecutors about when to charge corporate organizations with crimes, including violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Another Guilty Plea In Valve-Maker Case
Posted on February 03, 2009A second executive of a California-based firm has pleaded guilty to a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation. Richard Morlok, 55, the former finance director of Control Components Inc., admitted that from 2003 through 2006, he arranged corrupt payments to foreign officials of about $628,000...
A Bit Of An Old Boy's Club
Posted on February 02, 2009The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office was created in 1988 with the mission to investigate and prosecute big-time fraud and corruption -- the misdeeds, as Teddy Roosevelt would have said, of the wealthy criminal class. But things at the SFO haven't gone well, and Britain's Sunday Times is reporting that dozens of lawyers, accountants and investigators are being offered up to three times their annual salaries to leave their jobs...
It's A Start
Posted on February 01, 2009We've never come across any good news to report about Japan's overseas anticorruption enforcement. Until now, that is. Last Thursday, according to an AFP report, a court in Tokyo convicted three former executives and their consulting company for bribery in Vietnam...
Off Topic And On
Posted on January 29, 2009Our colleague, Paul Oki, sent this note from Nigeria a few days ago: Would it surprise you if I told you that even now it's not unusual to find cars with Obama campaign stickers plying our roads? Or that there were billboards in prominent places with "Obama for President" in some of our major cities? Or that on inauguration day several companies took out full page, color adverts in our national newspapers congratulating the American people? We all feel like proud Americans at this point in history -- I can't express it any better...
The Hunt For Overseas Evidence
Posted on January 28, 2009No corporations and just a few individuals have fought Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges in court, so only a handful of people have ever seen an FCPA defense up close. But for the first time, we have a chance to follow not one but three pending prosecutions -- in U...
Dealing With The DOJ
Posted on January 27, 2009The Justice Department resolves corporate FCPA enforcement actions these days by using deferred and non-prosecution agreements. And the go-to guys for information about them are Ryan McConnell, an Assistant United States Attorney in Houston, and Larry Finder, a partner in Houston with Haynes and Boone...
The Unnamed Party
Posted on January 25, 2009Last February, Aluminum Bahrain BSC, or Alba for short, made big headlines by filing an explosive federal lawsuit against Alcoa. Bahrain-owned Alba accused its long-time U.S. supplier of overcharging for raw materials during a 15-year period, and using some of the money to bribe Alba's executives for more contracts...
Halliburton Announces Pending Settlement
Posted on January 25, 2009Halliburton said today its final settlement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions with the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are waiting for final approval. It said it has reserved $559 million for the proposed settlements that include payments on behalf of its former subsidiary KBR...
Coming Clean In The Orient
Posted on January 22, 2009Hong Kong, a home-ruled Special Administrative Region of China since 1997, is one of the least corrupt economies on earth. It sits atop this year's Wall Street Journal / Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom, and occupies the 12th spot (tied with Austria) on Transparency International's current Corruption Perception Index...
Naked Corporate Defendants
Posted on January 21, 2009The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the decision in U.S. v. Ionia Management, S.A., shooting down attempts to change the way corporations are held liable for the criminal acts of their employees through respondeat superior. As we've said many times, nothing has had a greater impact on enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against corporations than respondeat superior, which leaves companies defenseless once employees are found to have committed violations...
Satyam Boss Skimmed Cash, Paper Says
Posted on January 20, 2009New allegations in the Satyam scandal could have major Foreign Corrupt Practices Act implications. A story in The New York Times by Heather Timmons on Sunday said Satyam Computer Services' founder and former chief, B. Ramalinga Raju, may have "skimmed huge amounts of cash from the company, rather than padding its books as he has claimed, a person involved in the investigation of the company said on Saturday...
Obama On Corruption
Posted on January 19, 2009With his family ties to Indonesia and Kenya, and who can forget Chicago, Barak Obama should know plenty about public corruption, and he does. The subject was clearly on his mind when he visited Kenya in 2006 (he's pictured left with his 83-year-old Kenyan grandmother)...
A Sword That Heals
Posted on January 18, 2009He explained his reason for hope this way: ?We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies...
China Notebook
Posted on January 15, 2009This is the first deep economic downturn most Chinese have experienced, so fear and anger are in the air. A Bloomberg report yesterday quoted an editor of a state-run magazine in the southwestern city of Chongqing as saying, ?We?re entering the peak of mass incidents...
Our Hollywood Minute
Posted on January 14, 2009Let's not forget the Greens. They're the movie producers arrested in December 2007 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Prosecutors allege they paid more than $1.8 million in bribes to a former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand in return for $14 million in contracts to stage the Bangkok Film Festival...
It's Another World At That Bank
Posted on January 13, 2009Like everyone else, we're stunned by the news coming from the World Bank these days. First Satyam, then Wipro, and now Megasoft Consultants Ltd. All three Indian outsourcing companies have been banned from doing business with the Bank because they violated the fraud and corruption provisions of its procurement guidelines...
Aon's New Path
Posted on January 12, 2009A couple of months ago, guest-blogger Scott Moritz talked about risk-based compliance. His post, we now see, was prophetic. Why? Because just last week, Aon settled an enforcement action with the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority. And the FSA's description of Aon's remedial compliance approach to agents and other intermediaries -- the group apparently responsible for its problems in a number of countries -- is straight from the risk-based play book...
Chasing Dirty Money
Posted on January 11, 2009The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act may frighten business people everywhere, but it has never been a big concern to crooked overseas officials. That's because they can't be prosecuted under the FCPA, which is aimed exclusively at punishing those who pay them bribes...
Aon Pays £5.25 Million Corruption Fine
Posted on January 09, 2009The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority said yesterday that it has fined Aon Ltd £5.25 million ($8.05 million) for failing to recognize and control the risks of overseas payments being used as bribes. The fine is the largest the FSA has levied for financial crimes...
California Exec Pleads Guilty
Posted on January 08, 2009The Justice Department has announced its first Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action of 2009. Mario Covino, 44, an Italian citizen living in Irvine, California, pleaded guilty in federal court in Santa Ana to a single count of conspiring to violate the FCPA by paying at least $1 million in bribes to foreign officials in several countries...
What's Wrong With Corporate Criminal Liability?
Posted on January 07, 2009Fiat's recent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act settlement brought this strong comment from Ellen Podgor at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog: The deferred prosecution agreement is yet another instance of the company selling out individuals within the company...
Above The Morals Of The Marketplace
Posted on January 06, 2009Griffin Bell, who was serving as attorney general when the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act became law, died Monday at age 90. He was appointed by Jimmy Carter in January 1977 and stayed until August 1979. As the first attorney general after the Nixon and Ford years, he came to a Justice Department that was damaged and diminished...
Dealing With Danger
Posted on January 05, 2009Compliance-savvy executives worry about the risks that come from third parties -- overseas acquisition targets, joint venture partners, distributors and agents. About three quarters of the bosses, according to KPMG's 2008 Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Survey, think their company's handling of intermediaries isn't working...
No Quick Fix
Posted on January 04, 2009The consequences of a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance problem can reverberate inside a company long after it reaches a settlement with the Justice Department. An illustration of that comes from AGA Medical. In early June last year, we reported that the privately-held maker of heart-related products resolved FCPA violations with the DOJ...
2008 FCPA Enforcement Index
Posted on December 29, 2008Eleven organizations were named in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or both, during 2008. All of the companies on our list resolved their enforcement actions, except privately-held Nexus Technologies Inc...
Cartels And Compliance
Posted on December 28, 2008A post earlier this month reported the sentencing of former Bridgestone manager Misao Hioki to two years in jail and an $80,000 fine for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to rig bids. Hioki, a Japanese citizen, became the ninth person from the so-called marine hose cartel to plead guilty to bid-rigging and the first to plead to an FCPA charge...
Help Wanted In Siemens Investigation
Posted on December 25, 2008One of ProPublica's outstanding investigative reporters, T. Christian Miller, wrote the story below (which ProPublica co-published with MSN Money). We reprint it under ProPublica's generous license ("You can republish our articles for free, if you credit us, link to us, and don't edit our material or sell it separately...
Who Fills Your Cup?
Posted on December 24, 2008It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality...
Fiat Pays $17.8 Million For FCPA Violations
Posted on December 22, 2008a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-VCYdpsUw3E/SVBx9v7iz1I/AAAAAAAABCU/UCWYyDA9fJ8/s1600-h/231208b.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 111px; height: 112px;" src="http://3...
First-Time Criminal Internal Controls Charges
Posted on December 22, 2008a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-VCYdpsUw3E/SVABbUS-rCI/AAAAAAAABCE/9I-JUJoBjrM/s1600-h/230812a.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 135px; height: 154px;" src="http://2...
Two More Ex-Willbros Workers Charged
Posted on December 20, 2008a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-VCYdpsUw3E/SU0oLyJdE2I/AAAAAAAABB0/FdJJDeyNyTg/s1600-h/1228.gif"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 100px; height: 100px;" src="http://4...
Siemens: The Clean-up Crew
Posted on December 19, 2008Here are some important corrections and clarifications to earlier posts about a href="http://fcpablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Siemens"span style="font-weight: bold;"Siemens/span/a:br /br /1. Wednesday?s a href="http://fcpablog.blogspot...
Foreign Affairs
Posted on December 18, 2008Our singular focus over the past week moved our spouse to ask whether we also plan to redo the walls in Siemens Blue. We're considering it. But what really comes to mind after the biggest FCPA enforcement action in history is that it involves not a U...
A Spectacular Leap
Posted on December 17, 2008a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-VCYdpsUw3E/SUm32mfIXoI/AAAAAAAABBk/m8toRmr6gpw/s1600-h/181208.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 146px; height: 110px;" src="http://2...
Was Justice Served?
Posted on December 16, 2008a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-VCYdpsUw3E/SUhaZQxfCXI/AAAAAAAABBc/RJHuVTDWUm4/s1600-h/171208.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 109px; height: 109px;" src="http://3...
Final Settlements For Siemens
Posted on December 15, 2008As expected, Siemens AG pleaded guilty Monday to violating the internal controls and books and records provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, reaching settlements with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission...
Siemens To Plead Guilty
Posted on December 12, 2008Bloomberg and the Associated Press are reporting that Siemens AG will plead guilty and pay at least $800 million in fines and disgorgement to settle global corruption charges with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission...
Siemens: Systematic Global Corruption
Posted on December 12, 2008It's a story of fraud, deceit and concealment -- a company gone haywire. It's filled with slush funds used to bribe public officials, phony contracts, fake invoices, and a boardroom feigning ignorance. And it all happened in one of the world's most important companies, a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, with nearly 400,000 employees and revenues last year of ?72...
The Friday Blotter
Posted on December 11, 2008Eric Stenberg from PWC's Investigations & Forensic Services in Alberta, Canada offered some practical advice in response to Hired Guns And The FCPA:Dear FCPA Blog,As a former security consultant to a Canadian drilling company in Nigeria, I can tell you there is only one way for foreign companies to effectively gain protection...
Japanese Executive Jailed
Posted on December 10, 2008A Tokyo executive was sentenced to two years in jail and fined $80,000 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to rig bids for the sale of marine hose and other industrial rubber products.Former manager Misao Hioki pleaded guilty to two felony counts filed on Dec...
Readers Respond To Hired Guns
Posted on December 10, 2008A comment last week from Huffington Post blogger Andrew Woods asked whether the reach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act should be extended to ban payments to local security forces. Our post about it is here. We've now heard from several readers, and nearly all were skeptical...
Risk-Based Compliance
Posted on December 09, 2008Guest blogger Scott Moritz (left) from Daylight Forensic & Advisory LLC says:In response to Halliburton?s proposed acquisition of Expro, the U.S. Department of Justice recently thrust the concept of ?a risk-based approach? to the forefront of anti-bribery compliance with Opinion Procedure Release 08-02...
A Trillion Dollars Lost
Posted on December 08, 2008It must be the Obama effect. Whatever the cause, the corporate fight against international public graft is now appearing on YouTube. To mark the World Economic Forum's International Anti-Corruption Day on Dec. 9, 2008, the top brass at some of the 140 signatory companies from the Forum's Partnering Against Corruption Initiative appear in the video below...
Mandarins Gone Wild
Posted on December 07, 2008Las Vegas is Everyman's cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperor's orgy is now a democratic institution. "Topless Pizza Lunch." ~Alistair CookeAccording to the Associated Press (which based its reporting on stories in the state-run Xinhua News Agency), 23 officials from the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou took a three-week trip to the U...
Friday Farewells
Posted on December 04, 2008We enjoyed the discussion here this week about human rights. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes more sense when you remember to look at it through the eyes of the victims of public graft. On the other hand, when the FCPA becomes a mere compliance process, you can begin to wonder what the fuss is all about...
Hired Guns And The FCPA
Posted on December 03, 2008A San Francisco jury on Tuesday refused to impose civil liability on Chevron for the deaths and injuries of Nigerian protesters caused by company-paid soldiers.The plaintiffs in Bowoto v. Chevron Corp., (99-2506, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California) accused Chevron of wrongful death, torture, assault, battery and negligence...
More Hurdles For Private Litigants
Posted on December 02, 2008In a case called Glazer Capital Management v. Magistri, the Ninth Circuit last week affirmed the dismissal of an FCPA-related class-action suit by shareholders of InVision Technologies, Inc. against the company and certain of its officers.The case interprets the U...
Postscript From Nigeria
Posted on December 01, 2008Support for the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act can come from unexpected places. Like Nigeria, for example. Here's how:Our friend and colleague there -- a lawyer who also runs a due diligence service, talks about the challenges of operating a legitimate business...
Just Laws And Human Dignity
Posted on November 30, 2008The failed nations of the world victimize the people who live in them and put the rest of us at risk. Basket cases like Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are often linked to carnage and chaos, sometimes within their borders and often beyond...
Family, Food, Football . . . And FCPA
Posted on November 26, 2008Our post yesterday referred to the long-pending Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations at Halliburton and DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler AG). For readers wanting to know what the two companies are now saying about their FCPA issues, we've rounded up their latest disclosures...
The FCPA, With All The Fixins . . .
Posted on November 25, 2008U.S. v. Kozeny: Bloomberg's David Glovin continues his great coverage of Frederic Bourke's prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Glovin's latest story says two of the government's witnesses will be a former U.S. Defense Department analyst, Christine Rastas, and John Pulley, an ex-agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration who was co-defendant Victor Kozeny?s security chief...
Can Someone Explain The Phone?
Posted on November 24, 2008Hi,Nice blog article recently [here] about Bulgaria and Romania! Having extensive experience dealing over there, I could not resist sharing this with you. I took the attached photo when I visited one of our customers..... This was the front door entrance...
In The Master's Defense
Posted on November 23, 2008As we've said, nothing has magnified the impact of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on corporations more than respondeat superior. Latin for "let the master answer," it's the legal doctrine holding companies vicariously liable for crimes committed by employees acting within the scope of their employment...
Aibel Pleads Guilty
Posted on November 21, 2008Aibel Group Ltd. of the United Kingdom pleaded guilty yesterday to violating the antibribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and failing to comply with the terms of its prior deferred prosecution agreement. It admitted making previously undisclosed illegal payments to Nigerian customs officials through its freight forwarder in return for preferential treatment...
That Friday Feeling
Posted on November 20, 2008The deep-thinking Kevin LaCroix at the D&O Diary had a post last week called On Blogging. Concerning the use of technology, he had this to say:It is easy to set up a blog. About two minutes on Blogger.com is enough to get started. But to get a blog set up the way you want and to deal with all of the problems that inevitably arise, a willingness to futz around with technology is indispensable...
The Briefing Book
Posted on November 19, 2008The President Elect and his transition team aren't spending hours each day pondering the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But there is one FCPA matter that should be on their agenda -- the investigation of BAE Systems. Why? Because that case -- whatever the outcome -- is a chance for the United States to demonstrate its commitment to fighting global public corruption...
Bulgaria Hits Bottom
Posted on November 18, 2008Corruption is now strangling its economy and robbing its people of any immediate hope for prosperity and freer lives. As foreigners pull the plug on investments and its stock market falls -- for 20 consecutive trading sessions now, down 82% overall -- Bulgaria continues to be under the world's anti-corruption spotlight...
Rocket Scientist Pleads Guilty In China Bribery Case
Posted on November 17, 2008A Virginia-based scientist who sold controlled space-launch technology to China by bribing government officials there has pleaded guilty to violating the antibribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.Shu Quan-Sheng (left), 68, a native of China, naturalized U...
The Paradox Of Corruption
Posted on November 16, 2008The man on the left is David Hess, an Assistant Professor of Business Law & Business Ethics at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He's on the blog today because he thinks and writes a lot about how to control corruption in international business...
Congressman's FCPA Trial Draws Near
Posted on November 13, 2008Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) moved closer this week to becoming the first member of the United States House of Representatives to be tried for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday tossed Rep...
Bourke Raises Vindictive Prosecution
Posted on November 12, 2008Frederic Bourke wants to know if the U.S. is prosecuting him for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act because he was a whistleblower who interfered in the strategic relationship between the United States and Azerbaijan.Bourke's lawyer -- the high-profile Dan Webb -- has asked Judge Shira A...
Outing Secret Account Holders
Posted on November 11, 2008In July this year, we posted about the U.S. Senate's investigation into how Swiss bank UBS AG hid around $18 billion for 19,000 Americans that went unreported to the IRS. We mentioned that the Senate's 115-page report cited a memo from LGT Bank, run by the royal family of Liechtenstein, about the use of secret offshore accounts for bribery in the U...
The FCPA Goes To Court
Posted on November 10, 2008For such a high-profile federal law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act doesn't make it to court much. In fact, most years go by without a single trial involving the FCPA. That's because typical defendants would rather cut a deal with prosecutors instead of risking a guilty verdict that might carry a five-year jail term...
Fearing Third Parties
Posted on November 09, 2008U.S. executives know that most Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance risks come from third parties -- overseas acquisition targets, joint venture partners, agents and others. Despite that knowledge, about three quarters of them think their company's due diligence of intermediaries isn't working...
Siemens Announces ?1 Billion Reserve
Posted on November 06, 2008Siemens AG said yesterday that it has reserved ?1 billion in fiscal 2008 "in connection with the settlement being sought by the company and with authorities in Germany and the United States." The short statement also said, "This current estimate is based on the status of ongoing discussions being held between the company and authorities in Germany and the U...
Bribery's Other Victims
Posted on November 05, 2008The comments were polite but pointed. This blog, the reader said, showers attention on bribe payers but ignores bribe takers. That's not fair. Those taking kickbacks are at least as culpable as those paying them.We agree, but we have a defense. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act --our subject in this space -- targets bribe payers exclusively and gives bribe takers a pass...
And The Winner Is . . .
Posted on November 04, 2008. . . the constitution of the United States.Once again, We The People have peacefully transferred the power to lead our country. That event, each time it happens, is nothing short of a miracle.Teddy White, one of our greatest political writers, who spoke so eloquently about the passing of the mantle of leadership to a new generation in 1960, once said, "There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign...
U.S. Law Firms Face China Bribery Probe
Posted on November 02, 2008At least two unidentified American law firms with offices in Beijing and Hong Kong have been mentioned in connection with an anti--corruption sweep in China. The current investigation is apparently linked to Avon Product's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act disclosure two weeks ago...
A Word Of Thanks . . .
Posted on October 30, 2008We're always thankful for Fridays, of course, but today ranks above others. Finally we can say goodbye to October 2008 -- a month that changed the world. We asked a friend for a favor last week. "What if I don't help you?" he said. "We'll tell everyone you're a banker," we answered...
Limiting The Local Law Defense
Posted on October 29, 2008An Opinion and Order in U.S. v. Kozeny issued October 21, 2008 and mentioned in our post yesterday deals directly with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's local-law affirmative defense. That defense says otherwise prohibited payments are permitted if the "payment, gift, offer, or promise of anything of value that was made, was lawful under the written laws and regulations of the foreign official?s" country...
In Bourke's Case, We Stand Corrected
Posted on October 28, 2008We never forget how many of our readers are real experts in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And how generous they are with their help. It happened again late last week when they asked us to set the record straight in U.S. v. Kozeny. Although we'd posted recently that the prosecution in the Southern District of New York was over as to defendant Frederic Bourke, he and the government are in fact gearing up for a criminal trial...
Use It Or Lose It
Posted on October 26, 2008We always enjoy it when Pete from DC drops by the blog. He's a veteran compliance professional and thinks deep thoughts about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Lately, he told us, he's been thinking about audit rights -- the kind mentioned in our recent post about joint ventures...
Overseas Bribery Allegations Against Florida Pol
Posted on October 23, 2008A federal lawsuit filed in Miami this week alleges that Republican fundraiser Harry Sargeant III and his company made illegal payments to Jordanian officials in exchange for an exclusive license to move military fuel through Jordan and into Iraq, according to NBC News...
Business Down, Compliance Risks Up
Posted on October 22, 2008When times are tough and markets shrink, new international joint ventures sprout up everywhere. They're a fast and inexpensive way to expand commercial reach. JVs formed out of economic necessity often bring together companies that in good times are competitors...
Ding Dong, FCPA Investigation Calling
Posted on October 20, 2008Beauty-products giant Avon said Monday that it has launched an internal investigation into possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in China that may be linked to improper promotional expenses. Avon -- with five and a half million independent sales representatives in more than 100 countries -- is the world's largest direct seller...
Amid OECD Criticism, A Breakthrough In Britain
Posted on October 19, 2008The U.K.'s failure to prosecute its multinationals for overseas bribery, while other European countries and the U.S. are stepping up enforcement, threatens the integrity of the international anti-bribery effort. That's what a fed-up OECD Working Group on Bribery says in a just-release report...
Looking Through The FCPA
Posted on October 16, 2008Legal loopholes, the conventional wisdom goes, expand over time, until there's more hole than donut. But is that true of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? Have its three Congressionally created loopholes -- two affirmative defenses and one exception -- gotten bigger over time?The answer is no...
Surveying FCPA Compliance
Posted on October 14, 2008Eighty percent of U.S. companies have now banned facilitating payments entirely, and nearly four in ten small U.S. companies have walked away from business in countries where the perceived risk of non-compliance was too high.Those are among the findings of Fulbright & Jaworski's 2008 Litigation Trends Survey...
Comments To What's The Count
Posted on October 13, 2008Nine out of 10 visitors to this blog (according to feedburner.com) view our posts through a reader such as Google Feedfetcher or an aggregator. That means most visitors normally don't see comments (or the buttons and other information to the right).In response to our prior post about how the DOJ and SEC count their FCPA actions, we've received some helpful comments that we want to share with everyone...
What's The Count?
Posted on October 12, 2008Some weekend. We should've expected it since the calendar says mid-October. That always means one thing, or maybe two. The sky is falling on Wall Street . . . and the American League Championship Series is in full swing, literally. In Game 2, seven home runs in five innings...
After Kay, Another Warning About Grease Payments
Posted on October 09, 2008Responding to our post, Case Closed For Kay And Murphy, reader Jon May has asked a great question: Isn't there a danger that the grease exception will lull businesses into the very conduct that is proscribed by Kay?Yes, there's a danger of that happening, but it's not new...
Charting The FCPA
Posted on October 07, 2008"Cash crunch could result in more corruption cases," says a headline in the current Financial Week (available here.) In the article, Steven Tyrrell, the head of the Justice Department's fraud section, says the credit crisis may produce a crop of additional Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases...
Case Closed For Kay And Murphy
Posted on October 06, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court will not review the Fifth Circuit's decisions in U.S. v. Kay, the Justices said yesterday. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act convictions of David Kay and Douglas Murphy cannot be further appealed and the two must now serve their prison sentences -- 37 months for Kay and 63 months for Murphy...
Tax Charges Added In Hollywood FCPA Case
Posted on October 05, 2008Last week's superseding indictment of movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green includes new allegations that Mrs. Green filed two false tax returns. The government says she signed returns in 2005 and 2006 that included deductions for "commissions" which she knew were "bribes to a foreign official for obtaining and retaining business...
News On The Greens
Posted on October 03, 2008A reader just sent along the following release from the DOJ:__________Issued on Friday, October 3 at 11:05 a.m. PDTFILM EXECUTIVE AND SPOUSE INDICTED FOR PAYING BRIBESTO A THAI TOURISM OFFICIAL TO OBTAIN LUCRATIVE CONTRACTS Acting Assistant Attorney General Matt Friedrich of the Criminal Division and United States Attorney Thomas P...
Probation For FCPA Offenses In Fake Degree Case
Posted on October 02, 2008A member of a Spokane, Washington?based diploma mill syndicate who bribed foreign officials to obtain accreditation of phony schools escaped prison in return for his cooperation with prosecutors.According to reports, Richard John Novak, 58, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to one count of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and another count of conspiring to violate the FCPA and commit wire and mail fraud, was placed on three years probation and ordered to perform 300 hours of community service...
In Search Of The Level Playing Field
Posted on October 01, 2008The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was last amended ten years ago. The "International Anti-Bribery and Fair Competition Act of 1998" was intended to make the FCPA consistent with the OECD Convention -- formally titled the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions...
A Rare (Or Medium-Rare) Opportunity
Posted on September 29, 2008Review Procedure Release No. 81-02 from December 11, 1981 may be a Cold War relic, but it's still relevant to the FCPA. It answers the question: How do you introduce new products to potential government customers in foreign countries without violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? That's what Iowa Beef Packers, Inc...
Kay Day At The Court's Conference
Posted on September 28, 2008I have a question for anyone on the FCPA blog, a reader asked ten days ago: Are there any known cases where an individual was prosecuted allegedly for bribing a foreign official where the "donor" did not ask for anything from the foreign official and where he received nothing?Can there be a crime without criminal intent? We assume the question is sincere and not a send up related to the Kay case...
Dear FCPA Blog . . . .
Posted on September 25, 2008What a week for mail! Just this morning, for example, we learned we'd won the Spanish Lottery. The ?850,000 prize that's waiting for us would put a lot of gas in the tank, even at today's prices. Then we remembered we've never bought a ticket for the Spanish Lottery...
Rocket Scientist Arrested Under FCPA
Posted on September 24, 2008The U.S. Department of Justice reported the arrest today in Virginia of a physicist on charges of bribing Chinese government officials to secure contracts for space-launch technical data and services that were illegally exported to China.The DOJ said Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, a native of China, naturalized U...
French Citizen Jailed For FCPA Offenses
Posted on September 23, 2008Former Alcatel executive Christian Sapsizian, 62, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and forfeiture of $261,500 for bribing employees of the state-owned telecommunications authority in Costa Rica. Sapsizian had pleaded guilty in June 2007 to two counts of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices...
The Supremes And The FCPA
Posted on September 21, 2008Questions about ambiguity in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act have been around since its inception. See, for example, our post Looking Again At U.S. v. Kay (November 7, 2007). The Supreme Court will answer those questions soon, either by granting review of the Kay and Murphy case and deciding what "obtaining or retaining business" means, or by refusing to take the case and allowing the government to continue its "expansive enforcement" of the law...
The Tally, Part 2
Posted on September 18, 2008Following yesterday's post, several readers suggested that we mention any other FCPA-related cases, appeals, sentencings and enforcement actions during the past year involving individuals. It's a good idea, and our thanks go out to Marc and our other correspondents...
What's The Tally?
Posted on September 17, 2008The Justice Department says it plans to prosecute more individuals under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- and send them to jail. We looked through our posts to see how men and women fared over the past year. Below are excerpts from posts dealing with those who've been criminally charged or sentenced under the FCPA, or settled enforcement actions with the SEC, or both, during the past twelve months...
The FCPA Isn't Fun And Games
Posted on September 16, 2008Mark Mendelsohn -- the Justice Department official responsible for criminal prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- has left no doubt that the government is targeting individuals. Here's what he told an audience at an American Bar Association panel discussion in Washington, D...
No Foreign Official, No FCPA Offense
Posted on September 14, 2008CW (who knows a lot about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) asked a great question. Can a payment directly to a foreign government intended to influence decisions in favor of the donor violate the FCPA? Surprisingly, the answer is no.An FCPA offense requires a corrupt payment to a "foreign official...
Oiling The Wheels Of Government
Posted on September 11, 2008Our spouse has somehow remained cheerful this week, despite the gloomy news from Fenway and the Pats' loss of Tom Brady because of a knee injury. Knees, by the way, seem oddly under-designed, unless their real purpose is to keep us humble.Bob Lanier was a knee-injury pioneer during St...
Intent On Complying
Posted on September 09, 2008The shocking news last week about Jack Stanley's guilty plea teaches again that not all FCPA violations can be prevented. No compliance program or compliance training would have kept Mr. Stanley on the right side of the law. Leaders with bad intentions -- with criminal intent -- can always find a way to cheat, and putting a compliance program in their path won't help...
A Hair Trigger For Corporate Liability
Posted on September 08, 2008All the briefs in United States v. Ionia Management, S.A. are now available on the White Collar Crime Prof Blog. The Second Circuit case challenges respondeat superior -- the legal doctrine by which companies are vicariously liable for crimes committed by employees acting within the scope of their employment...
More Individuals Indicted For FCPA Violations
Posted on September 07, 2008The Justice Department said it arrested four people last week on charges that they and their company bribed Vietnamese government officials in exchange for contracts to supply equipment and technology to Vietnamese government agencies.The DOJ said U.S...
Jack Stanley's Guilty Plea, Up Close
Posted on September 06, 2008ProPublica is a privately-funded, non-profit, independent newsroom located in Manhattan. It's led by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and its staff includes some of the best editors and reporters in the business. Its mission is to save investigative journalism, which is going the way of the dodo in commercial newrooms across America...
Why Comply?
Posted on September 04, 2008The potential consequences of a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation for an individual are easy to explain and understand. Personal tragedies result from the losses of freedom, jobs and reputations, and there's often financial ruin and damage to families...
Ex-KBR Boss Pleads Guilty
Posted on September 03, 2008The Justice Department said today that Albert ?Jack? Stanley, 65, a former chairman and CEO of KBR, the global engineering and construction firm based in Houston, pleaded guilty to a two-count criminal information charging him with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud...
Former Execs Avoid Hard Time
Posted on September 02, 2008Two former telecommunications executives who admitted bribing employees of state-owned companies in Africa and concealing the payments have avoided prison in exchange for their cooperation in an ongoing FBI investigation.The Justice Department said yesterday that Roger Michael Young, 48, of Washington, D...
Kozeny's Co-Defendant Wins Appeal
Posted on August 31, 2008Frederic Bourke won't face Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges after all. He was indicted in May 2005 with Victor Kozeny and David Pinkerton over their alleged plan to bribe officials from Azerbaijan from 1997 to 1999 in connection with the privatization of the state oil company...
Con-way Settles FCPA Enforcement Action
Posted on August 28, 2008Impermissible "facilitating payments" to customs officials and bribes to airline employeesCalifornia-based Con-way, Inc., a global freight forwarder, has paid a $300,000 penalty and accepted a cease and desist order to settle a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action with the Securities and Exchange Commission...
Two Minute Warning
Posted on August 26, 2008Boy, were we wrong. Syriana deserves all 5 Red Flags -- not as a movie, but as a compliance tool. A thoughtful reader set us straight. Our sincere thanks to Daniel, whose imaginative application of Syriana we heartily endorse.Here's what he told us:Dear FCPA Blog,Very nice analysis of Syriana in response to the movie that at least this reader had called out, following your post entitled "Sleaze in the Cinema, Take One...
Swiss Police Raid Alstom
Posted on August 25, 2008Swiss police last week arrested a former manager of French engineering giant Alstom and searched for evidence as part of a corruption and money-laundering investigation. Offices near Zurich and in Baden were raided, as were homes in several cantons.Paris-based Alstom is a global leader in equipment and services for power generation and high-speed rail transport...
More Than Gold
Posted on August 24, 2008Just a generation ago, the idea that it would host the greatest Olympics ever would have been outlandish. Black bicycles, gray Mao suits, grim faces -- a closed country, fearful and feared. But for the past 16 days, the world has witnessed something awesome...
That's Milton Friedman?
Posted on August 21, 2008Syriana is the best Hollywood movie ever made about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In fact, it's the only Hollywood movie ever made about the FCPA. So in that class of its own, it takes the top prize. But -- despite enthusiastic support of the film by some of our readers -- we'd rank it a bit lower...
Why We Cheat
Posted on August 19, 2008People who've violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act fall into two categories: those who had criminal intent from the start, and those who stumbled into the offense. It's the second group -- the regular folks who've done a bad thing -- who are so tragic...
Trouble For Siemens In South America
Posted on August 18, 2008Scandal-plagued Siemens now faces possible charges of public corruption in Argentina. Police in Buenos Aires raided Siemens' office there in connection with a bribery investigation. The United States, Greece, Italy, China, Hungary, Indonesia and Norway are also investigating whether Siemens broke anti-corruption laws...
Panalpina Quits Nigeria
Posted on August 18, 2008Compliance concerns have forced Swiss logistics giant Panalpina to withdraw completely from the Nigerian domestic market. It said in its 2008 half-yearly report (available here) that it will sell its local operations to a Nigerian group and retain no ownership or operating interest...
Sleaze In The Cinema, Take One
Posted on August 14, 2008Of all the great movies about public corruption, one of our favorites is "The Big Easy." Released in 1987, it's set in New Orleans -- the most unique (and least American) of all American cities. We were living in New Orleans when the movie came out, and a big part of our work then already involved compliance...
A Question Of Knowledge
Posted on August 12, 2008The mailbag this week brought the following question from KER:The FCPA prohibits payments to a third party while "knowing" that all or a portion of the payment will go directly or indirectly to a foreign official. The FCPA defines "knowing" as "highly probably" when it it forms an element of the offense and only "substantially certain to occur" with respect to conduct, a circumstance, or a result...
Speaking Of International Cooperation . . .
Posted on August 10, 2008We were moved -- very moved -- by the opening scenes from the Beijing Olympics. Part of the fun is seeing the fabulous changes in China since our first visit there 15 years ago. Has any country ever transformed itself so completely in such a short amount of time?And watching the China - United States basketball game was a kick as well...
Global Compliance Resources
Posted on August 07, 2008U.K.-based Ethical Corporation magazine's 2008 anti-corruption special report (available for download here) includes a table we've found useful. It lists many currently active multilateral anti-corruption agreements and describes how they work. Some of the conventions and voluntary agreements will be familiar to most readers, while others will be new...
A Quagmire Of Corruption
Posted on August 06, 2008Remember when Siemens talked hopefully about a quick resolution of its global corruption scandal? Clean house, deal with regulators and prosecutors, turn the page and move forward. Well, forget quick. It's not going to happen. Every day, it seems, there's more bad news...
He's Got The FCPA Blues
Posted on August 03, 2008Reuters' Matt Daily said it best:A year ago, Alcoa Inc brought Siemens Chief Executive Klaus Kleinfeld across the Atlantic to take the helm of the U.S. aluminum giant.This week, his baggage arrived.Daily's story is about Siemens' decision to sue 11 former executives, including ex-ceo Kleinfeld...
A Public Test For GE's Compliance Program
Posted on July 29, 2008The Corporate Crime Reporter (CCR) has a story here about a Sarbanes Oxley whistleblower complaint filed against General Electric by former in-house counsel, Adriana Koeck. She says she was fired from GE for reporting fraud in Brazil to her superiors, including alleged tax cheating and potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Distasteful But Not Illegal, Say The Lords
Posted on July 29, 2008The House of Lords ruled today that the Serious Fraud Office didn't break the law when it stopped its investigation into bribery allegations involving BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia.In April this year the High Court in London slammed the SFO's decision...
Calling All Pundits
Posted on July 27, 2008The mailbag brings plenty of pleasant surprises -- and this morning was no exception. We received the following message (changed slightly to protect identities):Dear FCPA Blog, As a member of the Law Review, I am required to write a student note. I am very interested in the FCPA and would love to write a note relating to it...
Readers' Choice
Posted on July 24, 2008Based on total page views, here are the top five posts from the FCPA Blog so far in 2008:1. Feeling the Heat Overseas, June 9, 2008Foreign companies can't be blamed for wondering if they're being singled out under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The names in the FCPA-related headlines alone are enough to cause high anxiety...
An Insider's Tale About Kazakhstan's Corruption
Posted on July 23, 2008The Wall Street Journal's July 22 Page One story on public corruption in Kazakhstan involving the ruling family is extraordinary. Reporters Glenn Simpson and Susan Schmidt have dug deep, with help from the former son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev...
BAE To Reform Its Compliance -- Later
Posted on July 22, 2008In May this year, after the Department of Justice briefly held and searched BAE's ceo and a director in separate U.S. airports, we asked if stonewalling the U.S. government in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation ever makes sense.We posed the question because BAE appeared to be doing just that -- thumbing its nose at the DOJ's investigation of alleged illegal payments to Prince Bandar bin-Sultan in return for the sale of jet fighters to the Saudi government...
Bulgaria Joins The Wrong Club
Posted on July 20, 2008One benefit of "globalization" -- a word we think means the integration of national economies into the global financial system -- is that corrupt regimes now come in for heavy international flak. The spotlight on corruption moves around -- it was on China for a while, then shifted to Nigeria...
UBS: Growth Run Amok
Posted on July 18, 2008We're exercising our Friday liberty to post a story that's not about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- at least not yet. It's about a world-class financial institution -- a market leader with 80,000 employees in 50 countries, the heavyweight champ of global wealth management -- that allowed its sales force to run wild and in the process trample numerous U...
Why We Keep Plugging
Posted on July 17, 2008It's a familiar and unwelcome moment. Those on the other side of the table spot the FCPA compliance language for the first time:The joint venture and all its personnel shall comply in all respects with the requirements of the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Unpeeling Opinion Procedure Releases
Posted on July 14, 2008Our post about DOJ Release 08-03 -- which deals with the payment of promotional expenses to journalists from state-owned media in China -- drew this response from Frequent Reader . . .Interesting, but the value of the release is uncertain to commercial companies that cannot meet the stipulation that they "have no business pending with any PRC government agency...
A Gold Medal For Opinion Procedure Release 08-03
Posted on July 13, 2008Foreign organizations in China have been vexed for years by the need to pay or reimburse Chinese journalists who attend local press events. The journalists can't afford to travel on their own and their employers don't reimburse them. But because most media outlets in the PRC are state-owned, the journalists are "foreign officials" under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Heading For The Hammock
Posted on July 10, 2008It's the weekend again. Good thing. We need (and deserve) some rest. What serious mind, after all, wouldn't be exhausted pondering how Tampa Bay can be one and a half games clear of the Red Sox? Strangely, our spouse seems to hold no opinion on the subject...
FCPA-Inspired Civil Suits Take Center Stage
Posted on July 09, 2008The always-helpful D & O Diary has a great post about FCPA-related civil litigation here. The topic is big news these days, with interest spurred by front-page suits brought by alleged victims of overseas public corruption -- most lately the government of Iraq, Bahrain's Alba and Denver oilman Jack Grynberg...
Heads I'm Corrupt, Tails You're Poor
Posted on July 09, 2008The FCPA matters because public corruption and poverty walk hand-in-hand. The point is illustrated too well by conditions in Bangladesh, a perennial basket case in the world economy. Here are some facts:Bangladesh ranked 162nd on Transparency International's 2007 Corruption Perception Index...
The Lords Hear From The SFO
Posted on July 07, 2008Yesterday the Serious Fraud Office asked the House of Lords to overturn April's High Court ruling that the SFO broke the law when it dropped its corruption investigation of BAE Systems.The case involves BAE's alleged secret payments of £1 billion to the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan...
Shock And Awe In U.S. Federal Court
Posted on July 06, 2008The government of Iraq filed a civil suit in late June in federal district court in New York City against two individuals and about 50 companies and some of their related firms for bribery that allegedly occurred under the United Nations oil-for-food program...
Good News For Mr. Pinkerton
Posted on July 02, 2008A report yesterday from Dow Jones said the United States has dropped its sputtering prosecution of David B. Pinkerton on charges of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.The government had alleged that in June 1998, as the head of AIG Global Investment Corp...
Cash In The Freezer
Posted on June 30, 2008The strange case of the Honorable William J. Jefferson, Member of the United States House of Representatives, keeps getting stranger.Rep. Jefferson (D-La.) -- a Congressman since 1991 from a district that includes New Orleans -- was indicted in June last year by a federal grand jury for violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Lights Out On Another Week
Posted on June 26, 2008Fridays are a mellow and reflective time here at the FCPA Blog. Feet on the desk, head tilted back, wondering what we'll eat over the weekend since the spouse took eggs benedict off our menu. So we were thinking -- were we too hard on the Justice Department this week? The DOJ was in a couple of posts that were a bit off topic, prompting a friend to ask, "Does the FCPA Blog have an opinion about everything or is it just a busy body?" For the record, we admire and respect most of what happens at the DOJ...
Halliburton, Expro and Umbrellastream Star In Opinion Procedure Release 08-02
Posted on June 25, 2008Halliburton's messy battle to acquire British firm Expro via a hostile takeover has been big news in the global business press, with Halliburton up one day and down the next, but fighting on and on. Now, though, the story isn't just big in the business press...
The DOJ's Slaughter Of Hope
Posted on June 25, 2008The Justice Department broke civil service laws and the country's heart by "deselecting" qualified young applicants linked to Democrats or liberal organizations ("weed out the wackos and wack jobs").It's the saddest news about our great government, we think, since tape on the door locks inside the Watergate Complex led to the most disgraceful exit from the White House in our Republic's history...
Coercive, Abusive and Unconstitutional --- For Starters
Posted on June 24, 2008The rule of law in the United States got some badly needed help last week from an unlikely source -- 33 former United States Attorneys. A letter they sent to Senator Patrick Leahy (D., VT), chair of the Judiciary Committee, asked him to support the proposed Attorney-Client Privilege Protection Act known as S...
Cases We'll Never Report
Posted on June 22, 2008Not all Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations make the news. Here are three reasons why:Reason #1. Ignorance. Some companies don't discover their own FCPA problems. It sounds improbable, but it happens. The usual scenario is this: One or more employees in a foreign outpost game the company's accounts-payable or expense-reporting system to create a slush fund...
Putting Compliance Programs To The Test
Posted on June 20, 2008How do you know if your company has an effective compliance program? The answer is crucial. If rogue employees violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, having an effective compliance program becomes a factor in whether the company will face a criminal enforcement action and, if it does, whether it will be rewarded with reduced penalties...
Moscow Debates Reforms, Sort Of
Posted on June 17, 2008The biggest public corruption story on the planet may be Russia -- the entire country, where red tape and bribery are scaring away foreign investors and wearing down ordinary citizens. Reform can't come soon enough, so we're glad that President Dmitry Medvedev is at least talking about the problem...
Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives, Part II
Posted on June 16, 2008The report published by the United Nations Development Program about public bribery in Asia that we talked about yesterday, Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives, examines corruption in utilities, the courts, police departments, land offices and hospitals, among others...
Sweating The Small Stuff
Posted on June 15, 2008Public corruption robs people of clean water, electricity, food supplies, a safe place to live and work, decent health care and, above all, opportunities to make things better. Graft, in other words, isn't a victimless crime, and whatever helps dispel the false notion that it is, is welcome in this space...
Industry-Wide Investigation Snares Wright Medical
Posted on June 13, 2008This week, Wright Medical Group became the latest orthopedic device maker to disclose a government investigation into its overseas sales practices. The company's Form 8-K said its principal operating subsidiary, Wright Medical Technology, Inc., received notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission of an informal investigation regarding potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
It's A Wonderful Life, Really
Posted on June 11, 2008A typical workday for us at the FCPA Blog probably starts like anyone else's. You know the routine. Get up around noon, pop over to the neighborhood brasserie for a crème bouffée or two (pictured left), then feed the pigeons and goldfish. After a quick nap we're ready to check the mail...
Justice For Corporate Defendants?
Posted on June 10, 2008Nothing has increased the impact of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on corporations more than respondeat superior. That's the legal doctrine by which companies are vicariously liable for crimes committed by employees acting within the scope of their employment--that is, within their actual or apparent authority and on behalf of the corporation...
A Hundred Tiny Bribes
Posted on June 10, 2008More than a month ago -- practically forever in the time-warped blogosphere -- we mentioned that a reader had shared with us a soon-to-be published paper about facilitating payments. Well, the paper has now been published.It's written by Hogan & Hartson partner T...
Feeling The Heat Overseas
Posted on June 09, 2008Foreign companies can't be blamed for wondering if they're being singled out under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The names in the FCPA-related headlines alone are enough to cause high anxiety. ABB, Siemens, BAE, DaimlerChrysler, AstraZeneca and many more...
Faro Pays $2.95 Million For FCPA Settlement
Posted on June 05, 2008Faro Technologies Inc. confirmed that it has resolved Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DOJ settlement requires payment of a $1.1 million criminal penalty and entry into a two-year non-prosecution agreement with appointment of a compliance monitor...
Unintended Consequences
Posted on June 03, 2008We never want to knock anyone's sincere efforts to reduce public corruption. Crooked officials and those who bribe them cripple economies and ruin lives. We stand with the other six billion people on the planet who want clean government. At the same time, not all anti-corruption initiatives are equal, and good intentions can sometimes produce bad results...
AGA Medical Resolves China-Related FCPA Charges
Posted on June 03, 2008Privately-held AGA Medical Corporation will pay a $2 million criminal penalty and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. It paid bribes of at least $460,000 to doctors in government-owned hospitals in China and to officials in the China patent office...
The Dog Ate Our Homework
Posted on June 01, 2008We had a nice post ready for today. Really. Then we remembered the 11:59 p.m. deadline on May 31 for the 2008 TRACE International essay contest on fighting public bribery. There were only a few hours to go so in desperation we sent our post off as our entry...
??????????
Posted on May 28, 2008That's right. The title of today's post says in Japanese, Terminate With Extreme Prejudice. Why? Well, we were spending just a few minutes surfing the internet (only during our company-approved tea break, of course) and happened to see the following news item from Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun (here):______________U...
Bribe Takers Get A Pass Under The FCPA
Posted on May 27, 2008With $4-a-gallon gas, disappearing honey bees and a world-wide hops shortage, there's hardly time to worry about anything else. Like why bribe-taking foreign officials are never prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Fortunately, a reader with time to ponder such things asked us that question after we reported last month (here) the FCPA-related sentencing of former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu...
The Highest Roller In Town
Posted on May 22, 2008Does it ever pay to stonewall the Department of Justice in an FCPA investigation? We're asking because of an item that ran in the May 21st edition of the U.K. Times Online (available here). It described the DOJ's detention of BAE's ceo and a director as they travelled separately through the Houston and Newark airports last week...
More Than Normally Careful
Posted on May 20, 2008Due diligence is a common subject, so it's natural to think of it as an easy subject as well. But it's not. There's no black-letter law anywhere describing due diligence, or what type is needed for an effective compliance program under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or how much should be done...
U.S. Prosecutors Detain And Search BAE Leaders
Posted on May 19, 2008The Justice Department escalated its politically explosive investigation into BAE Systems' role in the $2 billion bribery scandal involving alleged illegal payments to former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, in return for the sale of jet fighters to the Saudi government...
The Victims Of Corruption
Posted on May 18, 2008Today's Observer (the Sunday edition of the U.K.'s Guardian) carries an excellent commentary by Will Hutton here. It's about China's heartbreaking May 12, 2008 earthquake. The first paragraph says,Earthquake's don't destroy strong, well-built buildings, they destroy weak ones...
Willbros Resolves FCPA Offenses
Posted on May 14, 2008Willbros Group Inc. has confirmed that it will pay $32.3 million and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement to settle civil and criminal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission...
From The Mailbag
Posted on May 13, 2008The question our readers most want answered -- after we tell them bloggers have no way to predict Powerball winners -- is, Who's covered by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? It's always the jurisdiction thing -- and for good reason. How, for gosh sakes, does the FCPA reach from Washington to the four corners of the earth and back again? It's unnatural -- until you know how it works...
A Strange Season
Posted on May 12, 2008The last time it happened, North America was still deep in winter. On February 22nd, Flowserve agreed to appoint a monitor under a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice. Since then, just one corporate FCPA case is known to have settled...
A Modality By Any Other Name
Posted on May 12, 2008The language of corruption, as of most bad actions, is endlessly inventive. It could even be called picturesque if the subject wasn't the grubby crime of bribery. Like drug dealers who constantly rename their product to keep it attractive, those in the business of corruption do the same...
FCPA Guilty Plea For Bribing UK Official
Posted on May 09, 2008A former co-owner and executive of California-based Pacific Consolidated Industries (PCI) pleaded guilty yesterday to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Martin Eric Self, 51, of Orange, California pleaded guilty to a two-count information charging him with violating the FCPA by paying more than $70,000 in bribes to a U...
Former ITXC Execs Settle Civil FCPA Charges
Posted on May 07, 2008The Securities and Exchange Commission said today that on April 18, 2008 it settled civil proceedings under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against Steven J. Ott, Roger Michael Young, and Yaw Osei Amoako. The SEC charged the former executives of ITXC Corp...
The Woolf Report Tells No Tales
Posted on May 06, 2008The email received 12 hours ago said: You may find this interesting if you haven't seen it already. It's the Woolf Committee Report on BAE, -- released this morning. It's breathtaking in the extent to which they have focused stubbornly on the future and avoided a meaningful review of past conduct...
We Ask, And Answer, A Question
Posted on May 05, 2008Can an employee be charged with a criminal violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act even if his or her company isn't convicted of an FCPA offense? Yes. An employee can be prosecuted under the FCPA even if the employer hasn't been convicted. But -- and this is why the question is still asked -- the answer hasn't always been yes...
Great Words From The Hill, Circa 1977
Posted on May 04, 2008Aside from the villa on Lake Como and the Aston Martin in the garage, the greatest perk that comes from tending this garden is hearing from so many talented experts in the field of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Last week, for example, a generous reader shared with us a soon-to-be published paper about Facilitating Payments...
May It Displease The Court
Posted on May 01, 2008We enjoy a good argument just as much as the next lawyer. Stare decisis, analogy, plain meaning, ambiguity -- bring 'em on. Which is why it took us awhile -- the better part of two decades, but who's counting -- to firmly grasp this simple idea: When it comes to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, forget the fancy lawyer stuff...
Workers Of The World, Comply
Posted on April 29, 2008Tomorrow is May 1st -- also known as May Day or International Workers' Day -- a public holiday in large parts of the world, including our present location. It's a day to honor workers and their achievements, and to give people a well-timed spring holiday...
Fear And Greed And The FCPA
Posted on April 28, 2008We've noticed that when prices for energy and other commodities climb, there's more public corruption. Spiking prices, after all, mean fatter margins for producers and proportionately more insecurity for consumers. Meanwhile, middlemen see nothing but opportunities...
Ex-World Bank Manager Sentenced For FCPA Offense
Posted on April 27, 2008The Justice Department has announced the April 22, 2008 sentencing of former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu. The Indian national and U.S. permanent resident received 15 months in prison for conspiring to award World Bank contracts to consultants in exchange for kickbacks and for helping a contractor bribe a foreign official in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Boom Times For The FCPA Business
Posted on April 25, 2008Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein writes in today's paper here about the boom for law firms, accountants, investigators, computer forensics specialists, compliance consultants, conference organizers, "risk mitigators" and others caused by the recent increase in enforcement activity, internal investigations and self-reporting under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
U.K. Government Appeals BAE Decision
Posted on April 24, 2008The U.K. government is appealing the High Court's ruling that the Serious Fraud Office broke the law in shutting down an investigation into BAE's sale of jet fighters to Saudi Arabia. Pending the appeal to the House of Lords, the SFO will not reopen the investigation...
These Opinions Really Matter . . .
Posted on April 23, 2008When the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act became law in 1977, it ignited suspicions outside Washington that the government was planning a clever ambush, like a central-Florida speed trap, to catch unsuspecting business people and their lawyers in felonious conduct overseas...
A Country That Cannot Change
Posted on April 22, 2008Russia's English-language Moscow Times carries a provocative page-one story today (here) by Anders Aslund titled, "There Is Nothing Normal About Corruption." Author Aslund is a senior fellow at Washington, D.C.'s Peterson Institute for International Economics and author of "Russia's Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed...
The Majesty of the Law
Posted on April 21, 2008We admit to being stunned. Boggled, bowled over, dumbfounded, floored and flabbergasted (thanks, Roget's). We never expected the British High Court to disturb the U.K.'s somnolent status quo in the fight against international public corruption by ruling that the Serious Fraud Office broke the law in dropping its investigation of BAE...
The Week In Review
Posted on April 17, 2008Friday's coming just in time. We've used up more than our alloted pixels this week, but it wasn't our fault. There was Jack Grynberg's riveting tell-all complaint against his former big-oil partners, fresh allegations of cover-up or neglect or both in Seimens' internal investigation, and rising outrage at the impotence of the law, courtesy of BAE, Prince Bandar, Mr...
SFO Chief Calls For US-Style Reforms
Posted on April 16, 2008U.K.-based Ethical Corporation magazine has just released its 2008 anti-corruption special report. The 22-page publication (available on request here) is packed with Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance advice, descriptions of best practices from GE and others, and lots of news and analysis about enforcement trends...
All The News That Fits The Prince
Posted on April 15, 2008Hurrays all around for the British High Court's ruling last week. It said the Serious Fraud Office broke the law last year when, under irresistible pressure from the Blair government, it dropped an investigation into alleged bribes from British defense contractor BAE to Saudi Prince Bandar...
Grynberg v. BP et al
Posted on April 14, 2008Last week we reported here about the civil suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Colorado-based oilman Jack Grynberg, 76, against BP, Statoil and British Gas, along with some of their current or former top executives...
At Siemens, Who Knew What?
Posted on April 13, 2008German news magazine Spiegel posted a story online on April 12, 2008 (here) alleging that Siemens' former chairman Heinrich von Pierer and its executive board members may have been aware of "systematic corruption at the German multinational firm as far back as 2004...
Bribery Allegations Are Aimed At BP
Posted on April 09, 2008The British press is reporting (here and here) that oil giant BP and its current and former CEOs, Tony Hayward and Lord Browne, as well as Norway's Statoil and its CEO, are among the defendants named in a civil lawsuit involving allegations of bribery of government officials in Kazakhstan...
British High Court Slams Decision To Drop BAE Investigation
Posted on April 09, 2008The U.K. Guardian reports today (here) that the British High Court has ruled in scathing language that the decision by the Serious Fraud Office to drop an investigation into bribery allegations involving BAE Systems and Saudi Prince Bandar was improper...
The Great Temptation
Posted on April 07, 2008Some of the most charming and charismatic people in this world are agents ? the middlemen who help foreign companies navigate local waters in return for a slice of revenues, typically around 5%. That may sound like small money, but 5% of $100 million ? a little deal for telecommunications, military hardware or energy projects, for example ? is $5 million...
Ten Fast Facts About The FCPA
Posted on April 02, 2008It's easy enough to scoff at the slogans, proverbs and aphorisms that line the halls of the great corporations. Who hasn't emerged from a conference-room donnybrook wondering who the Teamwork posters are supposed to be talking about? And yet, THINK helped create an industry and a company to lead it, and Safety First really can save lives...
Why Do We Need (Or Want) The FCPA?
Posted on March 30, 2008In these pixels, we're fond of quoting A. A. Sommer, Jr. (1924-2002). During his years of public service, his perspective on the markets and their regulation was always influential, and is still worth studying. He was a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1973 to 1976 -- during the lead up to enactment of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Roll Call
Posted on March 27, 2008It was just two weeks ago that we were waxing about the quiet times for FCPA watchers, due to the temporary bottleneck in the appointments of corporate monitors. But come to think of it, the Department of Justice's Fraud Section, the group in charge of FCPA enforcement, has a lot on its mind right now...
At Alcoa, Who Knew What?
Posted on March 26, 2008If, as Alba alleges, Alcoa overcharged it under supply contracts by some $2 billion, and some or all of the money went into offshore accounts controlled by Alcoa's agent, who then bribed Alba's personnel and other Bahraini government officials, then the focus of the U...
A Matter Of Money
Posted on March 24, 2008At the White Collar Crime Prof Blog, Ellen Podgor -- who's now the solo blog editor since Peter Henning placed himself on well-deserved blog editor emeritus status -- discusses some of the obligations imposed by the Department of Justice on AB Volvo and its two subsidiaries in their deferred prosecution agreement here...
Questions And More Questions About Alba v. Alcoa
Posted on March 22, 2008The story is a real stunner. One of the world's biggest smelters, government-owned Aluminum Bahrain BSC ("Alba"), learns from a Kroll Report that its long-time raw materials supplier, U.S.-based giant Alcoa Inc., allegedly overcharged it for 15 years...
Feds Investigating Alcoa For FCPA Violations
Posted on March 21, 2008The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Alcoa Inc. violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other laws by bribing officials in Bahrain.The federal investigation was triggered when Aluminum Bahrain BSC ("Alba") filed a civil lawsuit three weeks ago in federal court in Pittsburgh accusing Alcoa of a 15-year conspiracy linked to overcharging, fraud and bribery...
All In The Family
Posted on March 19, 2008In a post here we described our edits to Wikipedia's article on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (here). Wiki's old article said a bank owner whose brother was the minister of finance would be a foreign official for the FCPA. That's wrong, we said, because although consanguinity might be important, it has never been a definitive test of foreign-officialdome under the FCPA...
AB Volvo Settles FCPA Charges For $19.6 Million
Posted on March 19, 2008AB Volvo today entered into a consent agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice to resolve Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in Iraq caused by two subsidiaries under the U...
More Weight On The Greens
Posted on March 18, 2008Thailand's investigation of the alleged bribery case involving Hollywood movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green is moving ahead. The Thai press reported last week (here, among other places) that the Department of Special Investigation has found enough evidence of alleged bribery to refer the matter to the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC), which handles prosecutions involving high-level public corruption...
Shell Discloses FCPA Investigation Related To Panalpina
Posted on March 17, 2008In its Annual Report and Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2007, Royal Dutch Shell plc includes a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act disclosure. It relates to the Department of Justice's ongoing investigation of Panalpina. Shell says,"In July 2007, Shell?s US subsidiary, Shell Oil, was contacted by the US Department of Justice regarding Shell?s use of the freight forwarding firm Panalpina, Inc and potential violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) as a result of such use...
Back On Track
Posted on March 16, 2008Our recent fall from grace wasn't exactly Spitzerian in scale. We're talking about our assault last week on Wikipedia (here). But the attack, as one reader pointed out, was senseless, because if you don't like something on Wiki -- in our case its FCPA article -- just change it...
The FCPA Takes A Holiday?
Posted on March 13, 2008It's been a quiet time here at the FCPA Blog. Not much to report. That's not really a bad thing. We've had a chance to clean our desk, get our shoes shined, and pick on Wikipedia. On that score, we even had time to submit some edits for Wiki's FCPA article...
The DOJ's Wrong Medicine For Monitors
Posted on March 11, 2008Hearings by the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law on "Deferred Prosecution: Should Corporate Settlement Agreements Be Without Guidelines?" are now underway. In advance of the hearings, the DOJ last week issued new internal guidelines on the selection and handling of monitors...
The FCPA For Everyone
Posted on March 10, 2008Wikipedia -- "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" -- has a page on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act here. It defines the FCPA this way:The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, et seq.) is a United States federal law known primarily for two of its main provisions, one that addresses accounting transparency requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and another concerning bribery of foreign officials...
Europe Discovers The FCPA
Posted on March 06, 2008John Russell, the managing editor of London-based Ethical Corporation magazine, has a nice article here about enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against European companies. This "new" FCPA compliance risk, the article says, is catching a lot of people by surprise...
More Monitors, More Controversy
Posted on March 05, 2008Reporter Mary Flood writes about deferred prosecution agreements in the February 29, 2008 Houston Chronicle here. For those new to the subject, deferred prosecution agreements (sometimes called non-prosecution agreements) allow corporations to avoid trials and criminal convictions in exchange for fines and compliance monitoring...
California Here We Come
Posted on March 04, 2008We've said before (here and here) that there's no private right of action under the FCPA. Which means offenses can be prosecuted only by the U.S. Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DOJ's Lay Person's Guide to the FCPA notes, however, that "[c]onduct that violates the antibribery provisions of the FCPA may also give rise to a private cause of action for treble damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), or to actions under other federal or state laws...
Pride Discloses Global Corruption Probe
Posted on March 03, 2008Pride International, Inc., a Houston-based drill-rig provider to the oil and gas industry, disclosed in its February 29, 2008 Form 10-K (annual report) an ongoing internal investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The countries involved may include Venezuela and Mexico, India and Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Nigeria, Libya, Angola and the Republic of the Congo...
The FCPA Is No Private Matter
Posted on March 02, 2008Last week we heard (here) that Alba -- not the movie star Jessica but the smelter Aluminum Bahrain BSC -- had sued Alcoa for bribing Bahraini officials in exchange for supply contracts. The allegations sounded exactly like an offense under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Lamb v. Philip Morris
Posted on March 02, 2008Billy LAMB and Carmon Willis, Plaintiffs-Appellants,v.PHILIP MORRIS, INC. and B.A.T. Industries, PLC, Defendants-Appellees. No. 89-5960. United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit. Argued Aug. 24, 1990.Decided Sept. 28, 1990. John F...
Bahrain Accuses Alcoa Of Bribery
Posted on February 28, 2008Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Aluminum Bahrain BSC ("Alba") has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Pittsburgh accusing Alcoa of a 15-year conspiracy linked to overcharging, fraud and bribery. The suit says more than $2 billion in Alba's payments under supply contracts passed from Bahrain to tiny companies in Singapore, Switzerland and the Isle of Guernsey, and that some of the money was then used to bribe Bahraini officials involved in granting the contracts...
U.S. v. Green -- See You In September
Posted on February 28, 2008Variety -- our favorite FCPA news source on leap day or any other day -- is reporting that the trial of Hollywood movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green has been postponed to September 2008. The husband and wife are accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying more than $1...
U.S. v. Kay: Once More To The Courts
Posted on February 27, 2008On January 10, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc from David Kay and Douglas Murphy. Kay and Murphy, executives of American Rice, Inc., were indicted in 2002 for bribing Haitian officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
A Little Help From Our Friends, Part II
Posted on February 26, 2008In Singapore circa 1994, Jeffrey Garten, who was then the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade, hosted a "breakfast briefing." The event was sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce, and the invitations said it would be a chance to discuss the challenges Americans face when they do business overseas...
A Little Help From Our Friends
Posted on February 25, 2008Our subject is always some aspect of the the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So around here the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission get lots of attention. But another U.S. government agency has a role to play in the FCPA...
BAE And Prince Bandar Stay In The News
Posted on February 24, 2008There may be no stopping this story. The latest is that in mid-February the British High Court heard how Saudi Arabia threatened to end all anti-terrorism cooperation with the U.K. unless the Blair government quashed an investigation into alleged corruption...
Flowserve Resolves Oil For Food Bribery Charges
Posted on February 21, 2008French and Dutch Subsidiaries Paid Kickbacks and Caused FCPA Books and Records ViolationsTexas-based Flowserve Corporation will pay about $10.5 million to resolve criminal and civil charges brought by the United States for illegal payments to Iraq under the U...
Disorder In The Court, Last Call
Posted on February 20, 2008How prevalent is judicial corruption? Our source this week, Transparency International, took a close look. During 2006 it asked almost 60,000 people in 62 countries whether they or any member of their household had interacted with their country's judicial system in the past year and, if so, had they paid a bribe...
Disorder In The Court, Part II
Posted on February 19, 2008Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, oil-rich Azerbaijan has been popular with foreign investors. They've committed some $60 billion to long-term oilfield development there. But the country of eight million is burdened by a judicial system that's corrupt and lacks independence...
Disorder In The Court
Posted on February 19, 2008It probably makes no sense to ask which form of public corruption is the worst, since they all destroy the fabric of society. But as lawyers, we think judicial corruption should be singled out. Honest judges, after all, restrain corruption, while crooked judges unleash it on entire countries...
Wabtec Resolves FCPA Violations Related To India
Posted on February 14, 2008Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation ("Wabtec") will pay about $675,000 and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses caused by its Indian subsidiary, Pioneer Friction Limited. In the Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative proceeding, Wabtec will disgorge $259,000 and prejudgment interest of $29,351...
U.S. v. Green, Take One
Posted on February 13, 2008Two weeks from now, in a Los Angeles federal district court, the husband-and-wife Hollywood movie producers charged with violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will go on trial. Gerald and Patricia Green were arrested last December and are out on bail...
A Straight Shot At FCPA Compliance
Posted on February 11, 2008Question: What essential aspect of FCPA compliance is also the toughest for organizations to come by? Here's a hint. It's what made the man on the left, Ben Hogan, the greatest golfer of his day. Answer: Consistency. It may as well be a physical law -- like the law of gravity or one of the laws of thermodynamics...
The Accounting Standards Make The Shortlist
Posted on February 08, 2008The FCPA's anti-bribery provisions attract lots more attention than its accounting standards -- and there's no mystery why. Public corruption is fascinating, while public accounting is . . . well, less fascinating. But although it might be tempting to ignore the accounting standards, doing that is never smart...
FCPA To The World: I Want You
Posted on February 05, 2008In its early days, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 stirred up a lot of angry talk from Americans because of its extra-territorial reach. Some legal scholars even questioned the constitutionality of a statute that clung to the citizens wherever they went...
Jurisdiction Untangled
Posted on February 04, 2008So much of the buzz about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act right now concerns investigations of name-brand foreign companies -- Siemens, BAE and Panalpina among them. Which makes it natural to ask, how do foreign companies come under the jurisdiction of the FCPA? The best explanation, we still think, comes from the United States Attorneys' Manual...
Siemens' Employees Come In From The Cold
Posted on February 01, 2008German engineering giant Siemens AG said yesterday that it will extend its employee-amnesty program for another month until the end of February. The extension is no surprise. In mid-January this year, Siemens' counsel, Debevoise & Plimpton, said that "[s]ince November 28, 2007, we have obtained significant new information and developed very substantial leads from participants in Siemens' amnesty program, as well as other sources, regarding topics relevant to our investigation...
Who's Monitoring The Monitors?
Posted on January 31, 2008Ellen Podgor at the indispensable White Collar Crime Prof Blog has a post about the federal compliance monitors program here. It links to an article in the Washington Post here, and sets out the text of proposed federal legislation to regulate the monitors and their appointments...
Another Look At China
Posted on January 30, 2008Yesterday we talked about a recent story in the Chinese press blaming foreign companies for more than half of the PRC's corruption, and singling out U.S. companies that violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in China. On reflection, we may have been unduly skeptical about China's motives for publishing the story...
Most Corruption Comes From Abroad, Says China
Posted on January 29, 2008A Special Warning For U.S. CompaniesAs China battles indigenous corruption, it's also spotlighting foreign and especially U.S. companies that are importing illegal practices into the PRC. A story in the Chinese press in December 2007 said, "According to a report by local consulting company Anbound, of the 500,000 bribery cases investigated in China over the last 10 years, 64 percent involved foreign companies...
Politics Is Still A Risky Business
Posted on January 28, 2008A note to our readers: Former Indonesian President Suharto, 86, died on Sunday, January 27, 2008. He led Indonesia from 1965 until 1998, when he was driven from office after months of street protests. During his one-man rule, Indonesia had an average annual growth rate of 6...
Handicapping The FCPA
Posted on January 24, 2008We heard a few days ago (here) that some Siemens insiders are trying to calculate the company's potential financial penalties for alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses. Apparently the insiders think that past FCPA settlements reveal a correlation between the amount of bribes paid and the financial penalties imposed on the organizations...
Heading For Trial In Tinseltown
Posted on January 23, 2008Our favorite news source here at the FCPA Blog -- Variety -- reports that the Hollywood film producers arrested for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act have pleaded not guilty and will go to trial on February 26, 2008. Gerald Green, 75, and his wife Patricia Green, 52, both of Los Angeles, were arrested on a criminal complaint filed in December 2007 in federal court in Los Angeles...
How Much Will Siemens Pay?
Posted on January 21, 2008A January 19, 2008 report in the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche (here) says unnamed members of Siemens' supervisory board (equivalent to U.S. directors) think the company may be fined as much as ?4 billion by United States regulators for alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Scandal Hits The Compliance Monitors
Posted on January 19, 2008The problems started for the Justice Department's corporate monitoring program late last year. Five leading orthopedic device makers had been charged with bribing doctors in the U.S. to get their business. (Now they're being investigated for bribing doctors overseas in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
FCPA Release 08-01 Goes The Distance
Posted on January 17, 2008The first Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Opinion Procedure Release of 2008 is out. It's the longest Release we know of -- just over twelve pages, and packed with details. It tells of a proposed investment in an overseas privatization, a raft of due diligence, tough and prolonged negotiations, yet more due diligence, and a final victory for compliance...
Siemens' Investigation Steams Ahead
Posted on January 17, 2008Siemens AG -- the German industrial giant enmeshed in a global corruption scandal -- said this week that for fiscal 2007 it will delay ratifying acts of individuals who have served on its managing board at any time since 1999. President and CEO Peter Löscher, who joined Siemens after the events under investigation occurred, and who's leading the effort to clean up the company, is exempt from the ratification's postponement...
The FCPA Can Be A Very Taxing Matter
Posted on January 15, 2008If you love studying the U.S. corporate and personal tax ramifications of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- and who doesn't? -- here's news about something special. It's an article called "Is This Bribe Deductible? Tax Implications of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
In Case You Missed It . . .
Posted on January 14, 2008The White Collar Crime Prof Blog published its 2007 White Collar Crime Awards in December. It's an entertaining list that makes some serious points as well. A few of the Collars, as the awards are called, are of particular interest to us. Here's one that went to our favorite subject, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act:The Collar for Hottest 30-Year Old ...
The Best FCPA Resources Money Can't Buy
Posted on January 12, 2008Where do we go when we need help with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? Our top choices are likely to include one or more of the following:1. FCPA Digest of Cases and Review Releases Relating to Bribes to Foreign Officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (the "FCPA Digest")...
The Curious Case Of The Cautious Requestor
Posted on January 09, 2008A typical reader of this blog will tell you that he or she is reasonably prudent when it comes to complying with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But we're all downright reckless compared with the sweet lady who stars in the most recent FCPA Opinion Procedure Release...
When Is Charity A Bribe?
Posted on January 07, 2008No good deed goes unpunished, or so the saying goes. That sure came true for Schering-Plough a few years ago. From February 1999 to March 2002, the New Jersey-based maker of Afrin, Claritin, Coricidin and Cipro, among other leading drugs, violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through overseas charitable giving...
Joint Venture Compliance
Posted on January 01, 2008International joint ventures bring very high risks under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Unreliable partners -- those who might pay bribes to foreign officials to help the business -- need to be spotted early and either avoided or controlled...
Akzo Nobel Pays $2.9 Million For FCPA Violations Under the U.N. Oil for Food Program
Posted on December 21, 2007Akzo Nobel N.V., a Netherlands-based pharmaceutical company, settled U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act books and records charges with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the SEC, Akzo Nobel consented to the entry of a final judgment permanently enjoining it from future violations of Sections 13(b)(2)(A) and 13(b)(2)(B) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, ordering it to disgorge $1,647,363 in profits, plus $584,150 in pre-judgment interest, and to pay a civil penalty of $750,000...
Lucent Settles FCPA Violations For $2.5 Million
Posted on December 21, 2007It Misused Affirmative Defense For Promotional ExpensesLucent Technologies Inc. settled U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission for $2.5 million. The settlement includes a $1 million criminal fine and $1...
That's Entertainment?
Posted on December 18, 2007Wow! It's not often -- never, in fact -- that we can talk about the LA movie scene and tap Variety as one of our sources. But here it is. The Department of Justice just announced that a Los Angeles film executive and his wife were arrested on allegations of making corrupt payments to a Thai government official in order to obtain lucrative contracts to run an international film festival in Bangkok, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
Making History In Pune
Posted on December 18, 2007Pune, India was the site of a groundbreaking conference on December 16, 2007 about the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The first-ever FCPA compliance event to be staged in India was organized by Indiaforensic, a non-profit group for anti-fraud professionals...
Coming Clean At Siemens
Posted on December 14, 2007Spiegel's December 12, 2007 online edition has a fascinating interview with Peter Löscher (left), who became ceo of Siemens AG in July 2007. There's lots for him to talk about. In October 2007, the German engineering and industrial giant settled global corruption charges with Munich prosecutors for ?201 million, based on questionable payments of ?420 million -- an amount the company later revised upward to ?1...
Schnitzer's Former Boss Settles FCPA Charges
Posted on December 13, 2007The former chairman and ceo of Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc. resolved charges on December 13, 2007 brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Robert W. Philip, 60, of Portland, Oregon, will pay about $250,000 to settle charges that he violated the antibribery, books and records and internal controls provisions of the FCPA (Section 30A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 [15 U...
A Six Pack For The Holidays
Posted on December 12, 2007We're getting into the spirit of the season, thankful for the many great blessings enjoyed during 2007. We won't disappear completely during the holidays, but we'll slow things down for a few weeks while we spend time with family and friends in other parts of the world...
Watch That Inkblot
Posted on December 11, 2007It's too soon to call it a pattern. But there's something new in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement. During 2007, the U.S. ramped up two investigations that covered not just individual companies but entire industries. That, we think, is worth a second look...
Enforcement Sans Frontières
Posted on December 09, 2007By most counts, U.S. authorities are now investigating between 50 and 60 companies for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That's a record number. How many of them will face enforcement actions is anyone's guess. But three investigations worth watching have this in common: the targets are industry-leading multinationals headquartered outside the United States...
Tough Medicine For Medical Device Makers
Posted on December 05, 2007The Securities and Exchange Commission said in October this year it is investigating possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by the leading manufacturers of orthopedic implants. Biomet Inc., Stryker Corp., Zimmer Holdings Inc., Smith & Nephew plc and Medtronic Inc...
Release 07-02, Where Are You?
Posted on December 05, 2007We noticed a week ago that U.S. Department of Justice Opinion Procedure Release No.: 07-02 (September 11, 2007) is missing. It no longer appears on the DOJ's website that indexes all FCPA Releases (here). The text of the Release is still available from the old link here, but not through the index...
An Effective Compliance Program Redux
Posted on December 04, 2007The question that lands most often in our mailbox is this: What are the elements of an effective Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance program? It's a great question. While proactive compliance programs reduce the chances of violations, no one can guarantee that a violation will never happen...
The Empty Chair
Posted on December 02, 2007It's official. Britain's absence from the global war on public corruption is now a full-fledged scandal. Nearly ten years after the U.K. ratified the Anti-Bribery Convention of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there hasn't been a single British prosecution...
One Of Congress's Finer Moments
Posted on November 29, 2007The Wall Street Journal has an editorial in its November 28, 2007 edition about the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the world-wide battle against public corruption. "Global Cleansing" is available here (but the online WSJ is still by subscription only)...
"Payload" Is An FCPA Watershed
Posted on November 28, 2007Visitors to this blog -- if they haven't done so already -- will want to read an outstanding article from the November 25, 2007 edition of the New York Times. It's called "Payload: Taking Aim at Corporate Bribery." The lengthy piece about the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is by Nelson D...
Will The Local Law Defense Help BAE?
Posted on November 26, 2007BAE Systems is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It allegedly paid £1 billion to Saudi Prince Bandar in return for his helping BAE sell 72 Typhoon jet fighters to Saudi Arabia...
The U.S. Is Gathering Evidence Against BAE
Posted on November 25, 2007The U.K. and Saudi governments deny that any laws -- including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- were broken. But questions persist about the £1 billion payment earlier this year by U.K. defense giant BAE Systems to Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the U...
Will Nigeria Hit The Boiling Point?
Posted on November 19, 2007The online edition of Nigeria's Business Day newspaper carried a story on November 19, 2007 that's noteworthy. It's about how corrupt multinationals are undermining the country's economy. The story can be found here. Public corruption always involves two parties -- the crooked official and the bribe-paying privateer...
All Eyes Are On Siemens
Posted on November 18, 2007The Big Show these days for followers of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is Siemens' global bribery scandal. To wit, the print and online versions of the November 16, 2007 Wall Street Journal carried a brilliantly reported Page One story based on the fact statement compiled by the Munich public prosecutor ("Ruling Details Bribery Across the Globe")...
Related Law Questions
Is it libel to write blog posts and/or online reviews about a local business that defames one's reputation?
Libel is the form of defamation expressed in fixed-- usually written form. Sland...
#1 Online Legal Resource
On 08-28 at 21:13PM
Ten months later, Fed must reveal names of emergency lending recipients #FOIA
On 08-25 at 19:02PM
Squeaky Fromme, would-be Ford assassin and Manson devotee, released from prison
On 08-14 at 15:19PM
Likely unintended consequence of cash-for-clunkers stimulus is dampening of 2010 spending
On 08-14 at 14:34PM
Palm seeks to halt Palm Pre Android theme on copyright and trademark ground
On 08-12 at 17:30PM
Congressional investigation demonstrates Karl Rove lied about his active role in US attorney's firing
On 08-12 at 16:20PM
Family of New York City swine flu victim to sue city for failure to secure school #nyc #swineflu
On 08-12 at 12:59PM
Real Network's DVD copying software deemed to break DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions
On 08-12 at 12:57PM
Prepaid funeral operators indicted for $100 Million fraud
On 08-12 at 12:53PM
NY Jets join Cincinnati, Dallas, Green Bay, Houston & Seattle #NFL teams offering branded state lottery games
On 08-12 at 12:43PM
Are you the author of this blog? Adding USLaw.com to your Blogroll increases relevance. You qualify to display a USLaw Network badge.
Suggest changes to this blog's description or nominate another for inclusion. Register for updates.
Is it libel to write blog posts and/or online reviews about a local business that defames one's reputation?
Libel is the form of defamation expressed in fixed-- usually written form. Sland...
 |
|
Contact Us | About Us | Celebrity Law Blog |
Our Partners | Disclaimer
| Law Blog Directory
| Law Jobs
| Law Tweets
| GoDaddy Hosting
All original material © 1999-2009 by USLaw.com. |