Posts Tagged ‘FCPA’
Corruption Is Still Corruption, Folks
Yes, the Supreme Court reached a preposterous conclusion last Friday in Snyder v. United States, when the conservative majority ruled that a “gratuity” that’s plainly part of a corrupt bargain is not a crime under federal anti-corruption law. Anxious corporate compliance professionals, however, should begin by asking a crucial question: Who cares? Seriously — how…
Read MoreEricsson Exits Monitorship
Mobile phone giant Ericsson has wrapped up work with its independent compliance monitor, formally concluding one of the biggest and longest FCPA enforcement actions ever. Ericsson announced the end of the monitorship Monday morning. That monitor, Andreas Pohlmann, was originally appointed in 2020 several months after Ericsson settled its FCPA violations in December 2019. The…
Read MoreAnother FCPA Action With No Monitor
Another week, another FCPA enforcement action against a Swiss commodities trader — and one that again might leave compliance officers puzzled, since it involves a repeat corporate offender that didn’t self-disclose, yet still managed to walk away without a compliance monitor. The company in question is Trafigura, which last week pleaded guilty to charges that…
Read MoreGunvor, Part II: Monitor Questions
Today let’s return to that mammoth FCPA settlement the other week against Swiss trading giant Gunvor, because one detail about the case seems quite puzzling. How does a recidivist offender with egregious FCPA violations avoid a compliance monitor? We didn’t get to explore that issue in our original post about Gunvor, but I’ve been reading…
Read MoreSwiss Trader Gunvor Pays $661M on FCPA Fails
Our latest FCPA enforcement action is a $661 million monster against Swiss trading firm Gunvor, which has pleaded guilty to bribing Ecuadorian government officials through the 2010s in exchange for intelligence about upcoming business contracts with the state-owned oil company of Ecuador. The Justice Department announced the settlement last Friday, along with a companion settlement…
Read MoreA Tale of Two Monitor Decisions
One dreaded outcome from a regulatory investigation is the appointment of an independent compliance monitor. Now two recent corporate misconduct settlements demonstrate how puzzling regulators’ decisions about compliance monitors can be — because for the life of me, I can’t figure out why one company received a monitor while the other didn’t. The cases involve…
Read MoreSAP, Part II: Remediation Work
Today, let’s return to the FCPA enforcement action announced last week against German software giant SAP, which resulted in $220 million in penalties and disgorgement, plus a long list of compliance remediation measures. Those measures are worth going through in detail. For those who missed last week’s news, the recap is as follows. SAP agreed…
Read MoreSAP Pays $220M on FCPA Violations
German software giant SAP is paying $220 million and implementing a raft of reforms to settle FCPA violations in seven countries, in a case with lessons about the importance of internal audits to root out misconduct and about structural reforms regulators want to see to prevent repeat offenses. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange…
Read MoreLessons in Freepoint FCPA Settlement
Federal authorities served up a $98 million FCPA enforcement action at the end of last week against a commodities trading firm in Connecticut. Today let’s take a look at the details of that case to see what the firm did and what lessons the rest of the compliance world can learn. The company in question…
Read MoreFEPA: A Huge Step on Foreign Bribery
We have a Christmas season surprise for all you anti-corruption enthusiasts out there! Washington has just passed the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, a law that makes it a crime for foreign government officials to demand or accept a bribe from a U.S. company. FEPA, as the legislation will now be forever abbreviated, was folded into…
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