Providing Something Of A Value Directly To A Foreign Government Is Not Necessarily An FCPA Issue
This recent Wall Street Journal article titled “Miners Try to Get Covid 19 Vaccines Into Areas Where Shots Are Scarce” highlights how various mining companies are spending millions of dollars to support COVID-19 vaccination efforts in countries in which they do business including “offering support to local governments during the pandemic, from conducting screening and mobile testing to donating extra beds for hospitals and clinics.”
Examples of good corporate citizenship or decisions made to advance a business interest?
After all, as stated in the article “by helping governments administer the shots, many companies hope they can rapidly rescale production depressed by the pandemic …”. As one mining executive stated in the article: “For us to operate efficiently and smoothly, we need to minimize the disruptions due to things like lockdown. Being part of a vaccination program makes complete business sense.”
Incentives To Induce Action
There is very little in common with COVID vaccination rates and FCPA compliance – except that the government encourages both.
Yet in one instance, the government provides meaningful incentives to induce action and in the other instance the government does not.
As to COVID vaccinations, states are offering the following incentives to encourage more people to get vaccinated: lotteries, scholarships, pre-paid grocery cards, fishing and hunting licenses, passes to state parks, even custom hunting rifles and shotguns. Several states are automatically entering people who have been vaccinated into lotteries that pay out $1 million or more.
COVID – A One Year Rewind
One year ago this week seems like yesterday, yet at the same time seems like years and years ago.
Last year around this time, it was hard not to think about COVID from a profession standpoint and any potential impact on FCPA compliance and enforcement. (See here for a roundup of some of the earliest articles, etc).
Several COVID-related posts appeared on FCPA Professor as well approximately one year ago.
Friday Roundup
Acquitted, scrutiny alert, under scrutiny again, across the pond, and compassionate release. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Acquittals
The so-called conventional wisdom in the U.S. is that business organizations under Foreign Corrupt Practices Act scrutiny (particularly publicly-traded corporations) simply can’t put the DOJ (or SEC for that matter) to its burden of proof in an enforcement action because it is too risky and may result in a “death sentence” for the company.
As highlighted in this post, the conventional wisdom is b.s., but the narrative still persists. In other countries however, corporations more frequently put government enforcement agencies to their burdens of proof by making factual and legal arguments.
Acting Assistant AG Rabbitt Talks White-Collar Crime
Recently Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt delivered this virtual speech to a White Collar Crime workshop.
As excerpted below, Rabbitt touched upon a variety of white-collar crime topics including individual accountability, DOJ policy, and data analytics.
Regarding white-collar crime generally, Rabbitt stated: