FCPA Probe Into Digicel Closed

Digicel

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…

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FCPA and ‘Under Pressure From the President’

fcpa

One of the great puzzles (to me, at least) about President Trump’s pause of FCPA enforcement was why he might want to allow U.S. companies to engage in corruption with foreign government officials. Now we can conduct a useful thought experiment, courtesy of the news that BlackRock is buying two ports that control access to…

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More Musings on FCPA Enforcement

fcpa

I wanted to share more thoughts today about President Trump’s order to pause all enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Lots of corporate compliance professionals have been talking about it — and while nobody has any clear sense yet of what comes next, we do have a better sense of the important questions to…

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Trump Halts FCPA Enforcement

trump

OK, the inevitable has happened. President Trump has issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to halt all enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and devise new enforcement guidelines for future prosecution. Let’s all take a deep breath, and then move on to consider the implications for corporate compliance programs. Is Trump’s anti-anti-corruption…

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New AG Signals FCPA Retreat

Bondi

Well that didn’t take long: on the same day that Pam Bondi was sworn in as the next U.S. attorney general, Bondi issued a flurry of policy memos that will have the practical effect of taking several big steps back from enforcement of corporate misconduct laws. Bondi arrived at the Justice Department on Wednesday afternoon…

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AAR Settles Intriguing FCPA Case

AAR

Here’s a Christmas present for compliance professionals! AAR Corp., an aviation services company, has agreed to pay $55.6 million to settle civil and criminal charges that the company bribed government officials in Nepal and South Africa in the 2010s — and is giving the rest of us some points to ponder on Justice Department credit…

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Double Blast of FCPA News

fcpa

Keep up, compliance officers! A subsidiary of global consulting giant McKinsey agreed today to pay $122.8 million to settle FCPA charges in South Africa; and the Justice Department says it might allow some companies currently under corporate integrity agreements to exit those agreements early.  Those are very different news stories, so we’ll take each one…

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Betting/Bitcoin Biz Settles FCPA Charges

fcpa

Federal prosecutors have sanctioned a one-time Chinese online lottery business turned bitcoin mining operation for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, where senior executives bribed Japanese lawmakers in the late 2010s to win permissions to open a casino there — and good lord, writing that sentence feels like hitting some sort of corruption risk…

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Telefónica Pays $85M on FCPA Fails

Telefónica

The Latin American telecom giant Telefónica settled FCPA charges late last week, paying $85 million and reminding everyone that at least for now (and possibly for a good long while yet), the world of corporate compliance and FCPA enforcement continues to turn. Let’s take a look at the lessons we can learn here. The Justice…

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Moog Dinged on FCPA Violations

Moog

The Securities and Exchange Commission served up a rather hum-drum FCPA enforcement action last week. While the case certainly isn’t a show-stopper, it does offer compliance professionals a few insights about corporate corruption; so let’s fulfill our due diligence obligations and study it. The company is Moog Inc., maker of motion controls systems for aerospace,…

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