Two months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Andrew Weissmann would take over as chief of Fraud Section in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, a position that involves responsibility for, among other things, the DOJ’s enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Mr. Weissmann has had a distinguished professional career, with previous stints in private practice and in government, including prior positions as Special Counsel to the Director of the FBI, and as the director of the DOJ’s Enron Task Force. But for those of us who care about maintaining the US government’s aggressive enforcement of the FCPA and its leadership in the global fight against corruption, Mr. Weissmann’s appointment should be cause for concern. The reason? Mr. Weissmann was one of the principal authors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2010 report, Restoring Balance: Proposed Amendments to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That report is notable principally for three things: (1) its strident attack on aggressive FCPA enforcement, (2) its proposal of a series of amendments to the statute that would gut the FCPA, and (3) its misleading manipulation (and sometimes outright misrepresentation) of both facts and law in making its case.

Fortunately, Professor Dan Danielsen at Northeastern School of Law and my Harvard colleague Professor David Kennedy provided an exceptionally thorough take-down of the Chamber of Commerce’s arguments in a report for the Open Society Foundations (OSF), called Busting Bribery: Sustaining the Global Momentum of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Aside from a few small (but admittedly important) errors, the OSF report provides a sufficiently thorough rebuttal that I won’t attempt to summarize it all here; rather, I urge readers to follow the links above. But let me just highlight a few aspects of Mr. Weissmann’s report for the Chamber of Commerce to explain why I think it deserves the harsh language I used. Continue reading →