At last Month’s Chatham House conference on Combating Global Corruption, much of the discussion focused on how to create incentives for corporations to uncover and voluntarily disclose violations of foreign anti-bribery laws like the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). This is important, because as I noted in last week’s post, most FCPA violations are revealed because of self-disclosures, rather than government or media investigation. During the conversation, a distinguished lawyer (whom I cannot identify by name, because of the Chatham House Rule) made the following argument: Although the U.S. Department of Justice claims to give corporations credit for self-disclosure of FCPA violations, “a careful examination of the evidence reveals” that self-disclosure does not result (on average) in any reduction in penalties.

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