International Law

Overseas Bribery Allegations Against Florida Pol

Posted on October 23, 2008
A 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, 2008
When 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, 2008
Beauty-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, 2008
The 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...

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Looking Through The FCPA

Posted on October 16, 2008
Legal 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, 2008
Eighty 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, 2008
Nine 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, 2008
Some 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, 2008
Responding 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Last 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Review 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, 2008
I 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, 2008
What 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Former 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, 2008
Questions 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, 2008
Following 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Mark 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, 2008
CW (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, 2008
Our 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
All 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
ProPublica 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...

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