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The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against global electrification and automation technology company, ABB Ltd, for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) arising out of a bribery scheme in South Africa. The company has agreed to pay a $75 million civil penalty to settle the SEC’s charges. The SEC’s order finds […]
All told, as an SEC Commissioner, Peirce has voted on 42 corporate FCPA enforcement actions. In 10 of the actions (approximately 25%) Peirce voted not to approve. In 25 of the actions (approximately 60%), Peirce objected to certain aspects of the enforcement action. In other words, Peirce has objected (in whole or in part) to […]
Call me old-fashioned, but when you voluntarily run a website devoted to a specific law (and have numerous paid advertisers with blinking and flashing ads placed on your website) you ought to have a basic obligation to get things right about that specific law. This includes being knowledgeable about the rather limited case law that […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced settled charges requiring Oracle Corporation to pay over $23 million to resolve charges that it violated provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) when subsidiaries in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and India created and used slush funds to bribe foreign officials in return for business between […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Brazil’s second largest domestic airline, GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The São Paulo-based company, also known as Gol Intelligent Airlines, agreed to pay $70 million to settle the SEC charges. According to the SEC’s order, Gol bribed prominent Brazilian government officials […]
As highlighted in this recent post, approximately 55% of individual enforcement actions on the DOJ’s FCPA website since 2018 concern non-FCPA offenses in connection with alleged foreign bribery schemes – most often money laundering offenses – and an astounding 37% or so of individual enforcement actions involve just one country: Venezuela. Continuing this theme, the […]
For two decades, federal prosecutors have aggressively prosecuted companies and executives that pay bribes to win business overseas, most often through use of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an antibribery law passed in 1977. But rarely have they sought to identify specific victims of corruption. That’s starting to change. After a surprise appearance by aggrieved […]
For many years, SEC enforcement officials have talked about the importance of individual FCPA enforcement actions and set forth below are representative quotes from over the years. *** The last individual FCPA enforcement action by the SEC occurred on October 14, 2020 (a gap that is approaching two years) – see here. This nearly two year […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Tenaris, a Luxembourg-based global manufacturer and supplier of steel pipe products, will pay more than $78 million to resolve charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a bribery scheme involving its Brazilian subsidiary. According to the SEC’s order, the resolution with […]
The last individual FCPA enforcement action by the SEC occurred on October 14, 2020 (more than 1.5 years ago) – see here. This one year gap is the most significant gap in individual FCPA enforcement by the SEC in nearly a decade. Since late October, 2020 there have been six corporate SEC FCPA enforcement actions and […]