International Law

FCPA-Inspired Civil Suits Take Center Stage

Posted on July 09, 2008
The always-helpful D & O Diary has a great post about FCPA-related civil litigation here. The topic is big news these days, with interest spurred by front-page suits brought by alleged victims of overseas public corruption -- most lately the government of Iraq, Bahrain's Alba and Denver oilman Jack Grynberg...

Heads I'm Corrupt, Tails You're Poor

Posted on July 09, 2008
The FCPA matters because public corruption and poverty walk hand-in-hand. The point is illustrated too well by conditions in Bangladesh, a perennial basket case in the world economy. Here are some facts:Bangladesh ranked 162nd on Transparency International's 2007 Corruption Perception Index...

The Lords Hear From The SFO

Posted on July 07, 2008
Yesterday the Serious Fraud Office asked the House of Lords to overturn April's High Court ruling that the SFO broke the law when it dropped its corruption investigation of BAE Systems.The case involves BAE's alleged secret payments of £1 billion to the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan...

Shock And Awe In U.S. Federal Court

Posted on July 06, 2008
The government of Iraq filed a civil suit in late June in federal district court in New York City against two individuals and about 50 companies and some of their related firms for bribery that allegedly occurred under the United Nations oil-for-food program...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Good News For Mr. Pinkerton

Posted on July 02, 2008
A report yesterday from Dow Jones said the United States has dropped its sputtering prosecution of David B. Pinkerton on charges of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.The government had alleged that in June 1998, as the head of AIG Global Investment Corp...

Cash In The Freezer

Posted on June 30, 2008
The strange case of the Honorable William J. Jefferson, Member of the United States House of Representatives, keeps getting stranger.Rep. Jefferson (D-La.) -- a Congressman since 1991 from a district that includes New Orleans -- was indicted in June last year by a federal grand jury for violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

Lights Out On Another Week

Posted on June 26, 2008
Fridays are a mellow and reflective time here at the FCPA Blog. Feet on the desk, head tilted back, wondering what we'll eat over the weekend since the spouse took eggs benedict off our menu. So we were thinking -- were we too hard on the Justice Department this week? The DOJ was in a couple of posts that were a bit off topic, prompting a friend to ask, "Does the FCPA Blog have an opinion about everything or is it just a busy body?" For the record, we admire and respect most of what happens at the DOJ...

Halliburton, Expro and Umbrellastream Star In Opinion Procedure Release 08-02

Posted on June 25, 2008
Halliburton's messy battle to acquire British firm Expro via a hostile takeover has been big news in the global business press, with Halliburton up one day and down the next, but fighting on and on. Now, though, the story isn't just big in the business press...

The DOJ's Slaughter Of Hope

Posted on June 25, 2008
The Justice Department broke civil service laws and the country's heart by "deselecting" qualified young applicants linked to Democrats or liberal organizations ("weed out the wackos and wack jobs").It's the saddest news about our great government, we think, since tape on the door locks inside the Watergate Complex led to the most disgraceful exit from the White House in our Republic's history...

Coercive, Abusive and Unconstitutional --- For Starters

Posted on June 24, 2008
The rule of law in the United States got some badly needed help last week from an unlikely source -- 33 former United States Attorneys. A letter they sent to Senator Patrick Leahy (D., VT), chair of the Judiciary Committee, asked him to support the proposed Attorney-Client Privilege Protection Act known as S...

Cases We'll Never Report

Posted on June 22, 2008
Not all Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations make the news. Here are three reasons why:Reason #1. Ignorance. Some companies don't discover their own FCPA problems. It sounds improbable, but it happens. The usual scenario is this: One or more employees in a foreign outpost game the company's accounts-payable or expense-reporting system to create a slush fund...

Putting Compliance Programs To The Test

Posted on June 20, 2008
How do you know if your company has an effective compliance program? The answer is crucial. If rogue employees violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, having an effective compliance program becomes a factor in whether the company will face a criminal enforcement action and, if it does, whether it will be rewarded with reduced penalties...

Moscow Debates Reforms, Sort Of

Posted on June 17, 2008
The biggest public corruption story on the planet may be Russia -- the entire country, where red tape and bribery are scaring away foreign investors and wearing down ordinary citizens. Reform can't come soon enough, so we're glad that President Dmitry Medvedev is at least talking about the problem...

Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives, Part II

Posted on June 16, 2008
The report published by the United Nations Development Program about public bribery in Asia that we talked about yesterday, Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives, examines corruption in utilities, the courts, police departments, land offices and hospitals, among others...

Sweating The Small Stuff

Posted on June 15, 2008
Public corruption robs people of clean water, electricity, food supplies, a safe place to live and work, decent health care and, above all, opportunities to make things better. Graft, in other words, isn't a victimless crime, and whatever helps dispel the false notion that it is, is welcome in this space...

Industry-Wide Investigation Snares Wright Medical

Posted on June 13, 2008
This week, Wright Medical Group became the latest orthopedic device maker to disclose a government investigation into its overseas sales practices. The company's Form 8-K said its principal operating subsidiary, Wright Medical Technology, Inc., received notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission of an informal investigation regarding potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

It's A Wonderful Life, Really

Posted on June 11, 2008
A typical workday for us at the FCPA Blog probably starts like anyone else's. You know the routine. Get up around noon, pop over to the neighborhood brasserie for a crème bouffée or two (pictured left), then feed the pigeons and goldfish. After a quick nap we're ready to check the mail...

Justice For Corporate Defendants?

Posted on June 10, 2008
Nothing has increased the impact of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on corporations more than respondeat superior. That's the legal doctrine by which companies are vicariously liable for crimes committed by employees acting within the scope of their employment--that is, within their actual or apparent authority and on behalf of the corporation...

A Hundred Tiny Bribes

Posted on June 10, 2008
More than a month ago -- practically forever in the time-warped blogosphere -- we mentioned that a reader had shared with us a soon-to-be published paper about facilitating payments. Well, the paper has now been published.It's written by Hogan & Hartson partner T...

Feeling The Heat Overseas

Posted on June 09, 2008
Foreign companies can't be blamed for wondering if they're being singled out under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The names in the FCPA-related headlines alone are enough to cause high anxiety. ABB, Siemens, BAE, DaimlerChrysler, AstraZeneca and many more...

Faro Pays $2.95 Million For FCPA Settlement

Posted on June 05, 2008
Faro Technologies Inc. confirmed that it has resolved Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DOJ settlement requires payment of a $1.1 million criminal penalty and entry into a two-year non-prosecution agreement with appointment of a compliance monitor...

Unintended Consequences

Posted on June 03, 2008
We never want to knock anyone's sincere efforts to reduce public corruption. Crooked officials and those who bribe them cripple economies and ruin lives. We stand with the other six billion people on the planet who want clean government. At the same time, not all anti-corruption initiatives are equal, and good intentions can sometimes produce bad results...

AGA Medical Resolves China-Related FCPA Charges

Posted on June 03, 2008
Privately-held AGA Medical Corporation will pay a $2 million criminal penalty and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. It paid bribes of at least $460,000 to doctors in government-owned hospitals in China and to officials in the China patent office...

The Dog Ate Our Homework

Posted on June 01, 2008
We had a nice post ready for today. Really. Then we remembered the 11:59 p.m. deadline on May 31 for the 2008 TRACE International essay contest on fighting public bribery. There were only a few hours to go so in desperation we sent our post off as our entry...

??????????

Posted on May 28, 2008
That's right. The title of today's post says in Japanese, Terminate With Extreme Prejudice. Why? Well, we were spending just a few minutes surfing the internet (only during our company-approved tea break, of course) and happened to see the following news item from Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun (here):______________U...

Bribe Takers Get A Pass Under The FCPA

Posted on May 27, 2008
With $4-a-gallon gas, disappearing honey bees and a world-wide hops shortage, there's hardly time to worry about anything else. Like why bribe-taking foreign officials are never prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Fortunately, a reader with time to ponder such things asked us that question after we reported last month (here) the FCPA-related sentencing of former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu...

The Highest Roller In Town

Posted on May 22, 2008
Does it ever pay to stonewall the Department of Justice in an FCPA investigation? We're asking because of an item that ran in the May 21st edition of the U.K. Times Online (available here). It described the DOJ's detention of BAE's ceo and a director as they travelled separately through the Houston and Newark airports last week...

More Than Normally Careful

Posted on May 20, 2008
Due diligence is a common subject, so it's natural to think of it as an easy subject as well. But it's not. There's no black-letter law anywhere describing due diligence, or what type is needed for an effective compliance program under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or how much should be done...

U.S. Prosecutors Detain And Search BAE Leaders

Posted on May 19, 2008
The Justice Department escalated its politically explosive investigation into BAE Systems' role in the $2 billion bribery scandal involving alleged illegal payments to former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, in return for the sale of jet fighters to the Saudi government...

The Victims Of Corruption

Posted on May 18, 2008
Today's Observer (the Sunday edition of the U.K.'s Guardian) carries an excellent commentary by Will Hutton here. It's about China's heartbreaking May 12, 2008 earthquake. The first paragraph says,Earthquake's don't destroy strong, well-built buildings, they destroy weak ones...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.