Tag Archives: Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

“Charitable Giving” — A Way Around the FCPA? Part I

Posted on by
4

The facts below were alleged in a recent case involving Hyperdynamics Corporation, an American firm whose sole asset is an oil concession in Guinea:

* In 2005 the Secretary General of Guinea told the company that “further review” of its concession was necessary.  On August 1, 2006, the company’s CEO founded the NGO American Friends of Guinea and on September 22, 2006, the government approved a renegotiated concession.

* In September 2007, following critical reports in the local news about the renegotiated concession and government threats to cancel it, the Secretary General visited Hyperdynamics’ Houston office.  Over the next year American Friends of Guinea “delivered and paid for antibiotics and glucose fluids for men, women, and children who were stricken with cholera and . . . planned new water well projects to get to the source of solving the problem.”

* On September 11, 2009, the Guinean government and the company signed a memorandum affirming with modifications its oil concession.  On September 29 Hyperdynamics donated stock in the company to American Friends of Guinea.

* In September 2011 after a new, transition government was installed, a further dispute about the concession arose.  That year the firm donated $20,000 worth of computer equipment to the Ministry of Mines and some $8,000 -$10,000 to the Guinean Offshore Department of Environment.

Assuming these allegations are true, do they amount to a “payment . . .  to [a] foreign official for purposes of influencing any act or decision of such foreign official in his official capacity” and thus constitute a violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? Continue reading →

Can the OECD Convention Prevent FCPA Backsliding?

Posted on by
3

A little while back I expressed some concern (perhaps excessive) about the possibility that we might be seeing a revitalized movement to “reform” (that is, weaken) the FCPA; I also worried a bit that a greater focus on prosecutions of individuals might lead to judicial rulings that would force the government to substantially narrow its reading of the statute (for example, with respect to the definition of “foreign official,” or what counts as “anything of value,” or the scope of statutory jurisdiction, or other matters where the statute itself is arguably ambiguous). In response to the latter concern, Duke Law Professor Rachel Brewster raised an intriguing possibility (in addition to several other reasonable responses to my worries): The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, she suggested, might limit the degree to which the U.S. Congress or courts narrow or limit the FCPA. As Professor Brewster succinctly put the point in her comment on one of my earlier posts:

[T]he OECD treaty … is even broader than the FCPA. Moreover, the courts of appeal that have ruled on the meaning of the FCPA (Kay, Esqenazi) have explicitly relied on the more robust OECD treaty provisions to support the government’s position. That gives me some comfort that the US court system is going to continue to support the DOJ/SEC’s current enforcement strategy. Even if the OECD treaty does not explicit answer questions like “who is a foreign official” and “what is anything of value” (although it does help with the narrow interpretation of the facilitating payments), the general tenor of the treaty (and subsequent treaties the US has backed and joined) supports the government’s strong enforcement approach.

This is a valuable point, and to a certain extent I agree. But I am less sanguine than Professor Brewster that the OECD Convention will prove much of a firewall against a potential congressional or judicial backlash against the DOJ and SEC’s aggressive approach to interpreting and enforcing the statute. Continue reading →

NYU Roundtable on the DOJ Fraud Section’s New “Corporate Compliance Counsel”: The Video and Some Thoughts

Posted on by
1

As many readers are likely aware, the U.S. Department of Justice Fraud Section (now headed by Andrew Weissmann), which has responsibility for enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (among other things), recently created a new position called the “Corporate Compliance Counsel,” and appointed to the post Hui Chen, a former corporate compliance officer for a number of major firms (including Microsoft, Pfizer, and Standard Chartered). The avowed purpose of the new position is to assist the DOJ in assessing the quality of a company’s internal compliance program and remediation measures. In the FCPA context (and others), these assessments are relevant to the DOJ’s decisions regarding whether to prosecute, what penalties to seek, and what additional remedial measures to pursue, even though there is not a formal “compliance defense” under the FCPA (or other statutes that the Section enforces). Thus, the thinking behind the creation of the new DOJ position seems to be that having someone in the Section with a lot of background in corporate compliance will enable the DOJ prosecutors to do a better job in evaluating the quality of a company’s compliance program and remedial efforts.

The creation of the Corporate Compliance Counsel position has garnered praise in some quarters, but also attracted some criticism; the critics tend to argue that the creation of the new position is, at best, a public relations move with little real consequence, and at worst an indirect effort to weaken the enforcement of corporate criminal laws.

Last week, the NYU Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE) hosted a public forum where Mr. Weissmann and Ms. Chen discussed the new position and answered some questions posed by NYU Professor (and PCCE co-director) Jennifer Arlen. Because I thought that this might be of interest to some readers, here’s a link to a video of the discussion.

A few additional thoughts about what I thought were the more interesting exchanges: Continue reading →

A Trade-Anticorruption Breakthrough?: The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Transparency and Anticorruption Chapter

Posted on by
16

The full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), released earlier this month, is already generating plenty of discussion. One of the proposed agreement’s most striking features is the full chapter on transparency and anticorruption, Chapter 26. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) had earlier stated that its objectives in negotiating the TPP included addressing transparency, accountability, and corruption; at the time I thought this was simply a negotiating ploy or marketing strategy, but it looks like I was wrong. As USTR’s summary of the “good governance” steps of Chapter 26 correctly notes, the TPP “includes the strongest anti-corruption and transparency standards of any trade agreement.” Indeed, Chapter 26–which appears to modeled in part on draft language that Transparency International had proposed for inclusion in a different trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership–could mark an important and unprecedented step towards using trade agreements to promoting and harmonize international anticorruption efforts.

Here are a few points that are or could be particularly important features of Chapter 26:

Continue reading →

Is the Walmart Case Not Such a Big Deal After All?

Posted on by
1

Last week I published a post with some conjectures as to why the DOJ’s investigation into alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations by Walmart – triggered by New York Times reports, published in 2012, of widespread bribes paid by Walmart’s Mexican subsidiary, Wal-Mex – might be taking a long time to resolve. I noted that there was as yet no evidence of an especially lengthy investigation, compared to the norm in big FCPA cases, but I nevertheless speculated that perhaps the case might take a long time because the seriousness of the misconduct, coupled with Walmart’s failure to disclose (or even to conduct a reasonable internal investigation), meant that the DOJ was going to insist on particularly severe penalties (which Walmart’s lawyers might be resisting). But I may have been completely wrong about that: According to a report in this past Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, the Walmart investigation is likely to be wrapped up soon, and the fine may be much smaller than expected, in part because (at least according to the sources for WSJ report) the bribery violations in Mexico were not as extensive as many (myself included) had thought.

It’s important to emphasize that the WSJ report has not been confirmed by the Justice Department, Walmart, or any other source. It may well turn out to be inaccurate. But let’s suppose for the moment that it’s (mostly) right. Suppose we see a Walmart settlement within the next few months in which the extent of (admitted) violations, and/or the severity of the penalties, are much lower than expected. What to make of this? A few thoughts: Continue reading →

(Why) Is the Walmart Case Taking So Long?

Posted on by
9

So this might not be the most important question in the world, but I’ve been wondering why the U.S. Government’s investigation into Walmart’s alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (or, more accurately, FCPA violations committed by Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiary, Walmex) has yet to produce a final settlement.

A quick and somewhat simplified recap (for those among our readers who don’t obsessively follow every FCPA case in the pipeline): In April 2012, two New York Times reporters broke a blockbuster story about how Wal-Mex had been systematically paying bribes to scores of Mexican officials to get permits for new stores (often circumventing local environmental protection and historical preservation regulations in the process), and—perhaps even more damningly—about how Walmart’s senior leadership, upon learning of the bribery allegations from an internal whistleblower and preliminary internal investigation, had decided to cover up the problem and reject its own compliance department’s calls for a thorough investigation. (Walmart tried to get out in front of the story by including a disclosure of possible FCPA problems in its December 2011 FCPA filing, though that disclosure downplayed the seriousness of the issue.) The original New York Times story, along with a follow-up story published in April 2012, netted the two reporters a Pulitzer Prize. Those reports, along with Walmart’s December 2011 disclosure, prompted the Department of Justice Securities & Exchange Commission to begin investigating Walmart for FCPA violations.

That was back in April 2012. It’s now three and a half years later, and there’s still no resolution of the case; the investigation is still ongoing—something that has prompted grumbling in some quarters about both the length and cost of the investigation (see here and here). Why is this taking so long?

This is a question I’ve heard several people raise at various conferences and meetings. I don’t have any good answers, but I thought I’d throw out a few hypotheses: Continue reading →

Should FCPA Enforcers Focus on Bribe-Paying Employees or Their Corporate Employers?

Posted on by
7

These days most (though not all) resolutions in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases involve corporate defendants paying fines or other penalties to the government. Usually (again, not always) the government does not bother prosecuting the employees who paid the bribes. (While the government has recently made individual liability in corporate criminal cases more of a point of emphasis — as exemplified by the DOJ’s Yates Memo, which Danielle discussed in yesterday’s post — the targets in those cases are typically senior executives who orchestrated bribe-paying schemes, not the lower-level executives or employees who actually paid the bribes.) The government also uses various legal tools to encourage lower-level employees blow the whistle on their employers.

Do we have this backwards? Right now, the government focuses its enforcement efforts on the corporate employers, rather than the lower-level employees who pay the bribes. Should the government instead emphasize enforcement actions against the employees? Right now, the government tries to give employees incentives to uncover and disclose evidence of FCPA violations committed by their employers. Should the government instead focus on encouraging the employers to uncover and disclose FCPA violations committed by their employees?

This past summer, I was fortunate enough to attend the Third Annual Conference on Evidence-Based Anti-Corruption Policies in Bangkok, and the keynote speaker at that event, New York University Law Professor Jennifer Arlen, made a case along those lines. (Professor Arlen’s address was actually a much more wide-ranging discussion of corporate criminal liability; I’ve extracted, and possibly oversimplified or distorted, one thread of her argument. But it’s an interesting enough argument that I think it’s worth engaging, and I’ll focus on the simple version, even though her position is more nuanced.) The argument goes something like this: The DOJ should adopt a policy that any corporation that discovers FCPA violations by its employees, and then promptly (a) discloses the violation to the government, (b) provides the government with information, and (c) assists the government in prosecuting the employee, should be exempt from corporate criminal liability for the violation; the DOJ should instead vigorously prosecute the individual employees in this situation (using the evidence that the corporate employer has itself provided). If the corporation fails to promptly disclose such a violation, however, and the government subsequently finds out about it, the corporation should be held criminally liable for the FCPA violation, and penalized accordingly.

I think this proposal is interesting enough to take seriously, though in the end I remain unconvinced that this shift in emphasis would be a good idea. Let me first lay out the argument in favor of this change, and then explain why I ultimately disagree. Continue reading →

No Longer a Cost of Doing Business: The Yates Memo Signals DOJ Is Serious About Going After Individuals

Posted on by
7

As many observers have noted, penalties for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations tend to fall on corporations, rather than individual wrongdoers. The individual employees responsible for the unlawful conduct rarely pay fines or go to prison. The FCPA is not unique in this regard; many U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) settlements with corporate defendants shield executives and employees from personal liability so long as the corporation accepts institutional responsibility. Yet this enforcement posture has been unsatisfying, and critics argue that many corporations simply treat the fines as an accepted cost of doing business. In response to this concern, and after much foreshadowing, the DOJ formally released a new policy on individual liability last week—a policy that applies to all corporate prosecutions and settlements, including those involving the FCPA. Known as the “Yates Memo” (it was announced by Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates in her remarks at NYU School of Law on September 9th), this new policy statement—the first major policy announcement from the DOJ under Attorney General Loretta Lynch—signals that the “cost of doing business” model of corporate compliance is coming to a definitive end.

Continue reading →

Cool Graphics and Useful Data: The “FCPA Map”

Posted on by
1

Earlier this summer the director of the Mintz Group (a private firm specializing in corporate investigations matters) referred me to a useful resource his firm has developed, an interactive “FCPA Map,” displaying in graphic and user-friendly from all the FCPA cases that have resulted in penalties, broken down by country, industry, and size of penalty (along with links to the court decisions or press releases announcing the resolution of each of the cases). All the information on this FCPA Map is publicly available and can be downloaded from other sources (including the DOJ’s website), but the interactive map is a helpful, user-friendly resource that I thought might be of interest to some of our readers (and may be especially useful for students). So I thought I’d give it a plug here.

[By the way, in case anyone is wondering: I have no relationship, financial or otherwise, with the Mintz Group. I’ve only met the director once, briefly, after he attended a lecture I delivered at the International Anti-Corruption Academy. Mentioning this may seem gratuitous, but on an anticorruption blog of all places, it’s probably important to address any concerns about conflicts of interest!]

TI Report on Anti-Bribery Compliance Programs in the Defense Industry: Some Quick Reactions

Posted on by
Reply

Last April Transparency International UK released a very interesting report on the quality of corporate anti-bribery compliance programs in the defense industry. (This was the second such report; the first was issued in 2015). The report evaluated the ethics and anti-bribery compliance programs of 163 defense companies along five dimensions (leadership & governance, risk management, policies & codes, training, personnel & helplines) using publicly available information, supplemented with additional internal information from 63 cooperating firms, and assigned each firm a letter grade (A-F). The most eye-catching result, and the one that has gotten the most attention in the press releases and reporting on the report, is how badly the defense industry seems to be doing overall on this issue: Of the 163 firms included in the review, there were 4 As, 23 Bs, 29 Cs, 31 Ds, 19 Es, and 57 Fs. Thus, fewer than 17% of the defense firms examined scored in the A or B range, while close to half (47%) received a failing grade of E or F.

That’s certainly a notable and important (and depressing) finding, but digging a bit deeper, there are a few other interesting features of the report that have gotten a bit less attention, and are worth highlighting. Continue reading →