The DOJ has a specific website devoted to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

On the page you will find a purported chronological list and alphabetical list of enforcement actions (even though many of the enforcement actions do not actually involve FCPA charges – see here).

With any free website (let alone a government website), there is probably not an expectation that the website be updated every day or perhaps every week as developments occur.

However, is it asking too much for the DOJ to keep its FCPA website reasonably current – and thus accurate?

This question has occasionally being asked on this site for over a decade (see here for instance).

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“Bribery” (however defined) is bad.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act outlaws a certain type of bribery.

Therefore, in the minds of some, all FCPA enforcement actions are good – regardless of enforcement theory, regardless of law enforcement conduct, and regardless of outcome.

Ten years ago this month, Judge Richard Leon (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia) disagreed an provided a blistering statement in dismissing a flawed DOJ FCPA prosecution.

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Twelve years ago this week, one of the most embarrassing DOJ FCPA enforcement actions began – an enforcement action that a federal court judge would ultimately call “a long and sad chapter in the annals of white collar criminal enforcement.”

In January 2010, DOJ announced criminal charges against 22 executives and employees of companies in the military and law enforcement products industry for engaging in a scheme to pay bribes to the minister of defense of an African country.

However, there was no actual involvement from any minister of defense. Rather, FBI agents, with the assistance of an individual who had already pleaded guilty to real, unrelated FCPA offenses (Richard Bistrong), posed as representatives of a Gabonese minister. While it was not the first use of proactive, undercover investigative techniques in an FCPA investigation, it was certainly the largest and most dramatic use of such techniques in the FCPA’s history, and the full force of the government’s surveillance capabilities were used against individuals from mostly small private companies located across America.

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