FCPA Probe Into Digicel Closed

The Justice Department has closed an FCPA investigation in a Caribbean telecommunications business, the second such closure since President Trump ordered a pause on all FCPA enforcement two months ago.

The company in question is Digicel, headquartered in Jamaica and offering a range of mobile phone and internet services across the Caribbean. Digicel had first disclosed its FCPA troubles to the Justice Department last November. Now, according to press reports in the Irish Independent (Digicel was originally founded by Irish businessman Denis O’Brien), prosecutors have decided not to proceed with the case. 

Apparently the Justice Department first informed Digicel of the declination to prosecute on April 1. Digicel (which is not publicly traded, so no SEC enforcement action either) informed investors of the news late last week. 

“Digicel was informed by the Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice… that the government has closed its investigation into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other laws in light of [Trump’s executive order] and information the Department learned during the course of its investigation,” the company said in a statement.

We don’t know much about the actual bribery misconduct. Digicel voluntarily self-disclosed the issue(s) last fall after an internal investigation, but we don’t know when the offenses happened, how egregious they were, or where they happened. 

On the other hand, Digicel has operated in the Caribbean since the early 2000s, does business in high-risk countries such as Haiti and El Salvador, and has had numerous dealings with state-owned enterprises in that part of the world over the years; so the potential for bribery and corruption offenses was certainly there.

Regardless, the larger compliance community is more interested in the bare fact that this case is now closed. It’s yet another tea leaf the rest of us can read as we try to divine the Trump Administration’s ultimate ambitions for FCPA enforcement, or the lack thereof. 

It’s certainly possible that the specific issues in the Digicel case weren’t egregious, and never would have warranted a major investigation. It’s also possible that Digicel has already improved its compliance program so much that it deserved a declination. We should note, for example, that Digicel did bring aboard Michael Watson as chief compliance and cybersecurity officer in 2024, and Watson has extensive compliance officer experience. 

The grand question, however, is how the Justice Department evaluated all those factors against its new standards for lighter FCPA enforcement — standards that might not even exist yet, since Trump told attorney general Pam Bondi to take six months to review FCPA policy and come up with new standards. 

One thing we do know: the Justice Department did not publish any formal declination letter, as it had been doing since 2016. If you look at the Fraud Section’s list of declination decisions, you’ll see Digicel is not there. Nor is there any listing for PetroNor, believed to be the first FCPA case closed under Trump’s executive order. That happened earlier this month. 

Is the Justice Department obligated to announce its declinations? No; but doing so has been helpful to corporate compliance teams as they try to understand the facts, circumstances, and compliance program efforts that might lead prosecutors to decide not to prosecute. 

Without those declination letters, the rest of us are left sniffing around for any scrap of information we can, to over-analyze and over-interpret its possible meaning. Radical Compliance will do so with vigor and zeal.