The recently enacted Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) will close a long-standing gap in anti-corruption enforcement by enabling the U.S. government to prosecute non-U.S. government officials who solicit or receive bribes, Dechert said in a Jan. 22 legal update.
Businesses and industry lawyers should expect to see an increase in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement this year, especially as DOJ more frequently uses data analytics to find possible violations, said Dan Kahn, the former chief of DOJ’s FCPA unit.
The U.S. fined German software company SAP SE more than $200 million for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, saying it bribed government officials in South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Indonesia and Azerbaijan to secure business contracts. The company agreed to a nearly $100 million settlement with the SEC and faces a $118.8 million criminal penalty, along with a forfeiture, as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with DOJ.
Lance Jasper, former senior counsel for the SEC's Division of Enforcement, has joined Akin as a partner in the white collar defense and government investigations practice group, the firm announced. Jasper, who worked for the SEC for over a decade, will focus on white collar defense, including Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases.
The U.S. brought enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against 13 companies in 2023, resulting in $776 million in penalties, a drop from the $1.5 billion in penalties announced in 2022 but up from $282 million in penalties from 2021, a Jan. 2 FCPA Blog post said. While the 2023 penalty total value was lower than in 2022, there were more companies penalized than in either 2022 or 2021, which saw eight and four companies, respectively, penalized. The blog said the average resolution amount announced by DOJ and the SEC was $59.6 million, with total financial settlements the lowest since 2021 and the second lowest since 2015.
White collar attorneys Maria Lapetina and Ian Herbert were elected members of the firm, effective Jan. 1, the firm announced. Lapetina centers her practice on internal and government investigations, including Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and anti-money laundering cases. Herbert is a member of the Trust and Family Office and Anti-Money Laundering practice groups, whose practice also centers on government investigations.
DOJ will not seek a second trial against embattled former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried related to charges he conspired to bribe foreign officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In a Dec. 29 letter to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said proceeding with the sentencing, and avoiding a delay that a second trial would cause, "would advance the public's interest in a timely and just resolution of the case" (U.S. v. Samuel Bankman-Fried, S.D.N.Y. # 22-00673).
A Georgia businessman, a former Honduran government official and a former Florida resident were charged with allegedly participating in a scheme to pay and hide bribes to Honduran government officials to "secure contracts to provide uniforms and other goods" to the Honduran National Police, DOJ said.
The U.S. declined to prosecute Minnesota-based Lifecore Biomedical’s alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after the medical device company voluntarily disclosed the violations and cooperated with the government’s investigation, DOJ said in a Nov. 16 declination letter.
Two British reinsurance brokers, Tysers Insurance Brokers Limited and H.W. Wood Limited, settled DOJ investigations on the companies' violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, DOJ announced. The charges arose out of the parts played by Tysers and H.W. Wood in a scheme to bribe Ecuadorian government officials "to obtain and retain reinsurance business with" Ecuadorian state-owned firms.