Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite last week touted DOJ's action under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, championing DOJ's $315 million FCPA resolution with ABB over the company's bribery of an official in South Africa's state-owned energy company (see 2212050021). The case was the department's "first coordinated resolution with authorities in South Africa," and has resulted in South African authorities bringing corruption charges of their own against the official, Polite said in closing remarks, as prepared for delivery, Dec. 9 at an anti-corruption conference.
Swiss commodity trading and mining company Glencore agreed to pay the Democratic Republic of the Congo $180 million to settle "all present and future claims" of corruption running from 2007 to 2018, the company announced. The news comes after Glencore pleaded guilty in a New York district court to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in May (see 2205270044). In that case, Glencore International and Glencore agreed to pay over $1.1 billion to settle the investigations into bribery and commodity price manipulation.
The U.S. is likely to see several more resolutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the coming months, Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said at an annual FCPA conference this week. Argentieri made the remark after highlighting FCPA enforcement action taken in 2022. These moves included three corporate FCPA resolutions, involving Stericycle, Glencore and GOL Linhas Airlines, and one declination under the Corporate Enforcement Policy with disgorgement, involving Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Holdings (JLT).
The failures of Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and Korea Telecommunications Corporation (KT) provide poignant lessons on how to beef up protection against corruption risks, particularly within the telecommunications sector, lawyers at Hogan Lovells said in an analysis posted on the firm's website Oct. 11. The sector "is particularly vulnerable to corruption," meaning compliance functions must look to "double down on their efforts to ensure that robust and efficient processes" are implemented and stress-tested, the post said.
Oracle Corporation will pay more than $23 million to settle charges it violated parts of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when its Turkish, Emirati and Indian subsidiaries used slush funds to bribe foreign officials for business from 2016 to 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced. The company agreed to pay around $8 million in disgorgement and a $15 million penalty, along with agreeing to "cease and desist" from violating the anti-bribery, books and records and internal accounting controls elements of the FCPA, SEC said. Oracle did so without admitting or denying the SEC findings.
A Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case showed the limits that a request under a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) can have for tolling a statute of limitations, two Holland & Knight attorneys said in an Aug. 29 blog post. The attorneys, Wifredo Ferrer and Gary Klubok, wrote that a recent district court decision tossing four counts of FCPA and other violation allegations on the grounds that the government cannot use multiple MLATs as a tool to extend tolling offers lessons for defense attorneys: criteria for when MLAT tolling orders end, and that MLAT tolling is offense-specific and not person-specific.
The U.S. is investigating at least 100 cases involving violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an FCPA Blog post said Aug. 22. The blog, which pulled data from FCPA Tracker, said 20 new active investigations have been disclosed since the start of 2020, including four companies involved in the oil and gas industry, two defense contractors, two medical device makers and two telecommunications companies. Half the 20 new disclosures came from companies based in the U.S.
The Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation into Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson's conduct in Iraq in 2019, the company said in a June 9 filing. The SEC told Ericsson it "has opened an investigation concerning the matters described in the company's 2019 Iraq investigation report." Ericsson responded that while "it is too early to determine or predict the outcome of the investigation," the company is "fully cooperating with the SEC."
The Securities and Exchange Commission last week fined Tenaris, a Luxembourg-based manufacturer of steel pipe products, more than $78 million for alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Employees and agents of Tenaris’ Brazilian subsidiary allegedly paid about $10.4 million in bribes to a Brazilian government official involved with the bidding process at Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned petroleum company, the SEC said June 2.
Resolutions involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act have continued at a “slow” pace in 2022, with only one announced FCPA-related corporate enforcement action during the first quarter of 2022, Miller & Chevalier said in its FCPA Spring Review released May 25. DOJ announced just two bribery-related guilty pleas in the first quarter and two FCPA-related indictments, the firm said. “This pace is consistent with the slower pace of such cases in 2021 and is well behind the pace that marked recent higher volume years such as from 2017 to 2019.”