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Dealing With The DOJ

The Justice Department resolves corporate FCPA enforcement actions these days by using deferred and non-prosecution agreements. And the go-to guys for information about them are Ryan McConnell, an Assistant United States Attorney in Houston, and Larry Finder, a partner in Houston with Haynes and Boone. They've identified, cataloged, analyzed and published findings about every "corporate pre-trial agreement" (their term) used from 1993 to 2008 -- all 112 of them.

They were joined for their latest study by Scott Mitchell, the head of the high-profile Open Compliance & Ethics Group, a nonprofit organization that helps member companies improve their culture by "integrating governance, risk management, and compliance processes."

In 2008, the authors say, there were just 16 deferred and non-prosecution agreements, down 60% from the record-setting 40 agreements in 2007. (From 2003-2006, there were 47 agreements; before 2003, there were just 9 agreements.) Seven of the 16 agreements last year related to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act settlements, compared with about a third in 2007. Last year's pre-trial agreements involved Sigue Corp., Jackson Country Club, WABTEC, Flowserve, AB Volvo, Willbros Group, AGA Medical, Faro Technologies, ESI, Milberg Weiss, Lawson Products, Republic Services, American Italian Pasta Co, Penn Traffic, IFCO and Fiat.

We asked Larry Finder a couple of questions about the 2008 study. Here's what he had to say:

The FCPA Blog: Why were the DPA / NPA numbers down so much from last year?

Lary Finder: Your guess is as good as mine. It's possible that the DOJ was distracted with Congressional hearings and the possibility of federal legislation on the monitor issue, but I truly can't divine the reasons. It is equally as possible that in the post-9/11 environment, more investigatory resources, e.g., FBI and U.S. Attorney, have been concentrated on terrorism-related matters rather than fraud cases. I just don't know.

The FCPA Blog: Your 2008 study talks about the Justice Department's recent clarification [at United States Attorneys Manual 9-28.710] that it won't require waivers of attorney-client or attorney work-product privileges when determining corporate "cooperation." You also talk about the DOJ's new internal rules on the appointment of monitors and the ban on "extraordinary restitution" payments by corporate targets. Do the DOJ's internal rules have the force of law?

LF: As I recall, the DOJ often states (in its published monographs, for example) that its policies are generally not enforceable against the government. The federal case the Department often cites as authority for that proposition is United States v. Caceres, a Supreme Court case from the late 1970s. That being said, our analysis suggests that the Department has been abiding by its own waiver policy. We saw that the privilege waiver language in DPAs was the exception (statistics from 2007 showed only 3 waivers, while in 2008 we found but two) . Further, the Department has every incentive to avoid the perception of violating its own policies on privilege and monitors, lest the organized white collar bar again lobby for curative federal legislation. We'll have to wait and see.

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Ellen Podgor at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog has already said, "This piece should be a must-read for in-house counsel and all attorneys working with companies on compliance programs." She's right. We don't know of any other way to get a clearer picture of what's going on with the DOJ's compliance agreements. This is practical information and a welcome bit of accountability.

The article can be downloaded now from SSRN here. It will appear in the May 2009 Corp. Counsel Rev. - Published by S. Tex. College Of Law, Volume XXVIII, No. 1.
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Full post as published by The FCPA Blog on January 27, 2009 (boomark / email).