Who Needs FEPA?

As long as political actors have existed, political actors have taken credit for filling a perceived legal gap by enacting new laws.

Time will tell of course, but query whether the recently enacted Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) (a law which seeks to capture the so-called “demand” side of foreign bribery) was even needed.

As has been discussed on these pages over the last several years when various versions of FEPA were introduced in Congress, the Department of Justice already has several criminal statutes available to prosecute alleged “foreign officials” who receive bribes and has been prosecuting such cases for a long time.