International Law

A Matter Of Money

Posted on March 24, 2008
At the White Collar Crime Prof Blog, Ellen Podgor -- who's now the solo blog editor since Peter Henning placed himself on well-deserved blog editor emeritus status -- discusses some of the obligations imposed by the Department of Justice on AB Volvo and its two subsidiaries in their deferred prosecution agreement here...

Questions And More Questions About Alba v. Alcoa

Posted on March 22, 2008
The story is a real stunner. One of the world's biggest smelters, government-owned Aluminum Bahrain BSC ("Alba"), learns from a Kroll Report that its long-time raw materials supplier, U.S.-based giant Alcoa Inc., allegedly overcharged it for 15 years...

Feds Investigating Alcoa For FCPA Violations

Posted on March 21, 2008
The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Alcoa Inc. violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other laws by bribing officials in Bahrain.The federal investigation was triggered when Aluminum Bahrain BSC ("Alba") filed a civil lawsuit three weeks ago in federal court in Pittsburgh accusing Alcoa of a 15-year conspiracy linked to overcharging, fraud and bribery...

All In The Family

Posted on March 19, 2008
In a post here we described our edits to Wikipedia's article on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (here). Wiki's old article said a bank owner whose brother was the minister of finance would be a foreign official for the FCPA. That's wrong, we said, because although consanguinity might be important, it has never been a definitive test of foreign-officialdome under the FCPA...

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AB Volvo Settles FCPA Charges For $19.6 Million

Posted on March 19, 2008
AB Volvo today entered into a consent agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice to resolve Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in Iraq caused by two subsidiaries under the U...

More Weight On The Greens

Posted on March 18, 2008
Thailand's investigation of the alleged bribery case involving Hollywood movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green is moving ahead. The Thai press reported last week (here, among other places) that the Department of Special Investigation has found enough evidence of alleged bribery to refer the matter to the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC), which handles prosecutions involving high-level public corruption...

Shell Discloses FCPA Investigation Related To Panalpina

Posted on March 17, 2008
In its Annual Report and Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2007, Royal Dutch Shell plc includes a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act disclosure. It relates to the Department of Justice's ongoing investigation of Panalpina. Shell says,"In July 2007, Shell?s US subsidiary, Shell Oil, was contacted by the US Department of Justice regarding Shell?s use of the freight forwarding firm Panalpina, Inc and potential violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) as a result of such use...

Back On Track

Posted on March 16, 2008
Our recent fall from grace wasn't exactly Spitzerian in scale. We're talking about our assault last week on Wikipedia (here). But the attack, as one reader pointed out, was senseless, because if you don't like something on Wiki -- in our case its FCPA article -- just change it...

The FCPA Takes A Holiday?

Posted on March 13, 2008
It's been a quiet time here at the FCPA Blog. Not much to report. That's not really a bad thing. We've had a chance to clean our desk, get our shoes shined, and pick on Wikipedia. On that score, we even had time to submit some edits for Wiki's FCPA article...

The DOJ's Wrong Medicine For Monitors

Posted on March 11, 2008
Hearings by the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law on "Deferred Prosecution: Should Corporate Settlement Agreements Be Without Guidelines?" are now underway. In advance of the hearings, the DOJ last week issued new internal guidelines on the selection and handling of monitors...

The FCPA For Everyone

Posted on March 10, 2008
Wikipedia -- "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" -- has a page on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act here. It defines the FCPA this way:The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, et seq.) is a United States federal law known primarily for two of its main provisions, one that addresses accounting transparency requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and another concerning bribery of foreign officials...

Europe Discovers The FCPA

Posted on March 06, 2008
John Russell, the managing editor of London-based Ethical Corporation magazine, has a nice article here about enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against European companies. This "new" FCPA compliance risk, the article says, is catching a lot of people by surprise...

More Monitors, More Controversy

Posted on March 05, 2008
Reporter Mary Flood writes about deferred prosecution agreements in the February 29, 2008 Houston Chronicle here. For those new to the subject, deferred prosecution agreements (sometimes called non-prosecution agreements) allow corporations to avoid trials and criminal convictions in exchange for fines and compliance monitoring...

California Here We Come

Posted on March 04, 2008
We've said before (here and here) that there's no private right of action under the FCPA. Which means offenses can be prosecuted only by the U.S. Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DOJ's Lay Person's Guide to the FCPA notes, however, that "[c]onduct that violates the antibribery provisions of the FCPA may also give rise to a private cause of action for treble damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), or to actions under other federal or state laws...

Pride Discloses Global Corruption Probe

Posted on March 03, 2008
Pride International, Inc., a Houston-based drill-rig provider to the oil and gas industry, disclosed in its February 29, 2008 Form 10-K (annual report) an ongoing internal investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The countries involved may include Venezuela and Mexico, India and Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Nigeria, Libya, Angola and the Republic of the Congo...

The FCPA Is No Private Matter

Posted on March 02, 2008
Last week we heard (here) that Alba -- not the movie star Jessica but the smelter Aluminum Bahrain BSC -- had sued Alcoa for bribing Bahraini officials in exchange for supply contracts. The allegations sounded exactly like an offense under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

Lamb v. Philip Morris

Posted on March 02, 2008
Billy LAMB and Carmon Willis, Plaintiffs-Appellants,v.PHILIP MORRIS, INC. and B.A.T. Industries, PLC, Defendants-Appellees. No. 89-5960. United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit. Argued Aug. 24, 1990.Decided Sept. 28, 1990. John F...

Bahrain Accuses Alcoa Of Bribery

Posted on February 28, 2008
Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Aluminum Bahrain BSC ("Alba") has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Pittsburgh accusing Alcoa of a 15-year conspiracy linked to overcharging, fraud and bribery. The suit says more than $2 billion in Alba's payments under supply contracts passed from Bahrain to tiny companies in Singapore, Switzerland and the Isle of Guernsey, and that some of the money was then used to bribe Bahraini officials involved in granting the contracts...

U.S. v. Green -- See You In September

Posted on February 28, 2008
Variety -- our favorite FCPA news source on leap day or any other day -- is reporting that the trial of Hollywood movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green has been postponed to September 2008. The husband and wife are accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying more than $1...

U.S. v. Kay: Once More To The Courts

Posted on February 27, 2008
On January 10, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc from David Kay and Douglas Murphy. Kay and Murphy, executives of American Rice, Inc., were indicted in 2002 for bribing Haitian officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

A Little Help From Our Friends, Part II

Posted on February 26, 2008
In Singapore circa 1994, Jeffrey Garten, who was then the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade, hosted a "breakfast briefing." The event was sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce, and the invitations said it would be a chance to discuss the challenges Americans face when they do business overseas...

A Little Help From Our Friends

Posted on February 25, 2008
Our subject is always some aspect of the the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So around here the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission get lots of attention. But another U.S. government agency has a role to play in the FCPA...

BAE And Prince Bandar Stay In The News

Posted on February 24, 2008
There may be no stopping this story. The latest is that in mid-February the British High Court heard how Saudi Arabia threatened to end all anti-terrorism cooperation with the U.K. unless the Blair government quashed an investigation into alleged corruption...

Flowserve Resolves Oil For Food Bribery Charges

Posted on February 21, 2008
French and Dutch Subsidiaries Paid Kickbacks and Caused FCPA Books and Records ViolationsTexas-based Flowserve Corporation will pay about $10.5 million to resolve criminal and civil charges brought by the United States for illegal payments to Iraq under the U...

Disorder In The Court, Last Call

Posted on February 20, 2008
How prevalent is judicial corruption? Our source this week, Transparency International, took a close look. During 2006 it asked almost 60,000 people in 62 countries whether they or any member of their household had interacted with their country's judicial system in the past year and, if so, had they paid a bribe...

Disorder In The Court, Part II

Posted on February 19, 2008
Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, oil-rich Azerbaijan has been popular with foreign investors. They've committed some $60 billion to long-term oilfield development there. But the country of eight million is burdened by a judicial system that's corrupt and lacks independence...

Disorder In The Court

Posted on February 19, 2008
It probably makes no sense to ask which form of public corruption is the worst, since they all destroy the fabric of society. But as lawyers, we think judicial corruption should be singled out. Honest judges, after all, restrain corruption, while crooked judges unleash it on entire countries...

Wabtec Resolves FCPA Violations Related To India

Posted on February 14, 2008
Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation ("Wabtec") will pay about $675,000 and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve Foreign Corrupt Practices Act offenses caused by its Indian subsidiary, Pioneer Friction Limited. In the Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative proceeding, Wabtec will disgorge $259,000 and prejudgment interest of $29,351...

U.S. v. Green, Take One

Posted on February 13, 2008
Two weeks from now, in a Los Angeles federal district court, the husband-and-wife Hollywood movie producers charged with violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will go on trial. Gerald and Patricia Green were arrested last December and are out on bail...

A Straight Shot At FCPA Compliance

Posted on February 11, 2008
Question: What essential aspect of FCPA compliance is also the toughest for organizations to come by? Here's a hint. It's what made the man on the left, Ben Hogan, the greatest golfer of his day. Answer: Consistency. It may as well be a physical law -- like the law of gravity or one of the laws of thermodynamics...

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