GAB welcomes this Guest Post by Noam Kozlov, an honors graduate of Hebrew University with an undergraduate degree in Economics and Philosophy and an LL.B. A clerk for Israeli Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron during the 2024/2025 term, he is now pursuing an LL.M. at the Harvard Law School.

For decades, the United States has spearheaded the global fight against transnational corruption. Its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the first statute to outlaw foreign bribery, led directly to the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention which requires all wealthy nations to outlaw foreign bribery. The US has also been the leader in prosecuting foreign bribery cases, bringing more than the rest of the world combined.

The Trump administration’s February 2025 pause in FCPA enforcement, and subsequent new policy narrowing its scope, have created a crisis in the enforcement of this fundamental global anticorruption norm.  What nation has the reach and the resources to take over from the US?

At the same time, there could be a bright edge to the shadow cast by the US retreat. The crisis could force the international community to move away from reliance on a single dominant country and toward a more equitable model of enforcement, one based on shared responsibility through prioritizing the sharing of proceeds and empowering institutions in nations where bribes were paid; an approach that would advance the restitutive objectives of anticorruption enforcement more effectively than the US-centric model ever could.

With the future of the FCPA uncertain, European countries responded. In March 2025, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland announced the formation of the International Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Taskforce, prompting some to argue that Europe could become the new leader in global anticorruption enforcement. This post argues that Europe cannot nor should it. As a practical matter, it cannot replace the US as a unilateral enforcer due to profound resource and jurisdictional disparities. Europe should instead develop strategies for cooperation in investigations and proceeds sharing with countries on whose territory the corrupt behavior occurred. In doing so, the crisis created by American withdrawal offers an opportunity to build an equitable, truly global anticorruption network.

The Irreplaceable Scale of US Enforcement

The American FCPA apparatus for global anticorruption enforcement is the oldest, and also the largest. The resource gap between the US and its European counterparts is immense. Between 1977 and 2023, the US issued 320 FCPA-related enforcement actions, whereas the UK, France, and Switzerland together had only 71 anti-bribery enforcement actions with the rest of the OECD logging roughly 75 actions. Data from TI and the UNODC show prosecutions by non-OECD nations to be virtually nonexistent. The widely-discussed multi-billion-dollar FCPA resolutions also demonstrate US dominance in anticorruption enforcement.

Anticorruption investigations are often complex and costly. The large FCPA settlements enabled the US to expand specialized FCPA enforcement within the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Stanford FCPA Clearinghouse estimates the cost of a single FCPA-related investigation at $1.5 million per month. By comparison, the UK government has recently provided the UK’s Serious Fraud Office with an additional £9.3 million to tackle corruption, what commentators have called “a drop in the ocean” relative to the costs of litigating against well-funded multinational corporations.

In addition to the resource advantage, the FCPA’s jurisdictional reach creates an enforcement mechanism that would be difficult for European countries to replicate. Foreign companies listing securities on US exchanges, either directly or through American Depositary Receipts, become subject to FCPA jurisdiction; the clearing of dollar transactions in American capital markets provides another significant jurisdictional basis. By contrast, the UK, with the most robust anticorruption apparatus after the US, has a much narrower jurisdictional reach, especially with respect to foreign subsidiaries.

Furthermore, the US’s market control and international dominance give it access to additional enforcement resources. Defendants who cooperate with FCPA investigations by funding an independent party to conduct an internal investigation are rewarded with lower fines and shorter periods under direct DOJ supervision. This outsourcing of investigative responsibility enables the US to conserve resources and gather evidence that would be difficult to obtain without the firm’s cooperation, such as witnesses or documents located abroad. It is unlikely that firms will demonstrate the same willingness to cooperate with European agencies, as they lack comparable leverage over international corporations.

Overall, even if the Taskforce countries were to combine their enforcement efforts, they currently lack the resources and jurisdictional reach to fill the gap left by the FCPA. By itself, Europe is unlikely to replace American dominance in anticorruption enforcement.

Cooperative Anticorruption Enforcement

Europe cannot, and should not, replace the US in anticorruption enforcement. Instead, the Taskforce and European agencies should leverage their strengths to assist foreign governments in prosecuting corruption within their own borders. This requires a shift toward sharing the proceeds of enforcement and cooperation in investigations, especially with countries on whose soil the corruption occurred and whose citizens are the primary victims of the corrupt conduct. While the Taskforce invites “like-minded agencies” to join its ranks, its success depends on expanding beyond this seeming comfort zone.

The Taskforce should consider adopting the evolving US practice of global settlements in FCPA cases. Until the current FCPA turmoil, the US had increasingly been sharing proceeds from FCPA penalties with foreign authorities. For example, Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil corporation, was involved in a corruption scheme where the company paid government officials in exchange for inflated contracts. Petrobras agreed to a $1.78 billion global resolution with US and Brazilian authorities, with around $680 million paid to the Brazilian government. In its resolution announcement, the DOJ noted the active role Brazilian authorities played in the investigation. Duke Law Professor Rachel Brewster documents the increasing prevalence of this policy in a recent article, .

Despite the growing use of global settlements by the US, they are not the norm, occurring in an ad hoc manner, and seldom involving the countries on whose soil the bribery took place. Furthermore, even when the US agreed to grant foreign agencies a “seat at the bargaining table,” as Brewster puts it, the investigation and resolution remain dominated by US agencies. It is here that the Taskforce could expand the practice, differentiating itself from the traditional unilateral model of American FCPA enforcement.

Some of the FCPA global settlements have included Taskforce countries. For example, Airbus, a French-Dutch company, engaged in a widespread transnational corruption scheme. An investigation by French, British, and American authorities led to a coordinated settlement. Even in this case, though, the proceeds were shared only among Western countries that participated in the investigation, not with the countries on whose soil the bribery occurred, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Ghana. In recent years, Taskforce countries have increasingly voiced their commitment to returning corruption-related proceeds to victim countries, aligning with UN and OECD directives. However, critics have pointed to the limited extent to which the Taskforce countries have delivered on these commitments.

Cooperation in the resolution of anti-bribery investigations also benefits defendants, who might otherwise face continuous probes by other countries who were not party to a resolution. For example, Malaysia has continued to investigate the Airbus case even after the aforementioned FCPA settlement. Similarly, a joint settlement reached by the US and Germany with Siemens Corporation regarding bribery of Greek government officials during the 2004 Olympics was not recognized by Greek authorities, which continued to demand the extradition of Siemens officials and to pursue their own criminal prosecutions.

With the Taskforce countries seemingly taking the lead in global anticorruption efforts, the need for proceeds sharing becomes more apparent. This arrangement recognizes that foreign authorities often have superior access to evidence, witnesses, and local enforcement mechanisms. Proceeds sharing thus incentivizes domestic anticorruption investigations and intergovernmental cooperation. It also addresses the concern that victim countries should benefit from enforcement actions targeting corruption within their borders.

In line with GAB Publisher Matthew Stephenson’s criticism of aspects of FCPA proceeds sharing, the arrangement should be limited, at least initially, to governments that cooperate with the investigation. That said, the Taskforce should notify domestic governments of this opportunity and enact official policies to facilitate cooperation in investigations and the sharing of proceeds.

Proceeds sharing and cooperation in investigations are often treated as distinct issues: proceeds sharing is viewed as a duty arising from fairness and redistributive justice considerations, whereas cooperation in investigations is by no means a precondition for returning proceeds to victim countries. However, the two objectives are naturally intertwined. Bona fide cooperation in the investigation indicates that the country has at least some rule-of-law mechanisms that would reduce the likelihood that the proceeds would be misappropriated or in themselves used for corrupt behavior. Furthermore, the sharing of proceeds could be preconditioned on the government’s commitment to use at least some of them to strengthen its anti-corruption mechanisms. Even from a fairness perspective, a government that has cooperated in the investigation has a stronger case for receiving some of the proceeds from fines levied on offenders, in a way that would facilitate the recovery of corruption-related assets and compensation for damages.

The cooperative model also leverages Europe’s position in the global financial system. While European agencies sometimes lack jurisdiction to prosecute foreign bribery, they often host the financial intermediaries used to launder proceeds of corruption. For example, an SFO investigation into illicit transfers might uncover evidence of bribery that took place abroad. Even if the UK lacks the jurisdiction to prosecute the bribery, it could share this financial information with local prosecutors. Additionally, by sharing expertise and evidence, Taskforce countries could empower local jurisdictions to conduct their own enforcement actions. An example of the conditional return of corruption-related assets is found in Kazakhstan, where the US and Switzerland agreed to transfer confiscated, corruptly-obtained assets after robust mechanisms were established to prevent their misappropriation. Of course, this cooperation depends on the existence of at least some domestic rule-of-law institutions and independent investigatory capabilities, which is the case in some jurisdictions but not others.

From Unilateral to Global Enforcement

The potential retreat of the US offers an opportunity to correct a long-standing imbalance in global anticorruption law. While the FCPA regime may have been effective, it was also criticized for being a form of so-called legal imperialism. It has facilitated the US acting as a global enforcer, issuing enforcement actions for conduct to which it had little connection, while in the majority of foreign bribery cases, victim countries have been left out of the bargain.

Thus, the current crisis created by the US withdrawal from vigorous prosecution of foreign bribery cases could also have a silver lining. It forces the international community to move away from reliance on a single dominant country and toward a truly global anticorruption framework. Consequently, Europe should not try to fill the US’s shoes. Instead, it should lead to a more equitable model of enforcement through shared responsibility. By prioritizing proceeds sharing and the empowerment of local institutions, this approach also advances the restitutive objectives of anticorruption enforcement, more effectively than the US-centric model ever could.

Conclusion

With the uncertainty in American anticorruption enforcement, many see in Europe, and specifically the Taskforce countries, the future leaders in the global fight against corruption. This post argues that European agencies should not seek to replicate American dominance but instead advance a cooperative framework with countries in the Global South. By pivoting from unilateral enforcement, European states could ensure that anticorruption enforcement continues and evolves into a more inclusive and effective global framework.

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