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Friday Roundup

By on May 9, 2014 in Citigroup, CreditSuisse, Distributor Issues, Dmitry Firtash, Fresenius Medical Care, Goldman Sachs, Hiring Family Members of Foreign Officials, Internal Controls, Joseph Sigelman, Key Energy Services, Morgan Stanley, Parametric Technology, PetroTiger, PTC, Quanta Services, Technology Industry, Third Parties, UBS

Is trust “reasonable,” Sigelman formally indicted, scrutiny alerts and updates, and for the reading stack.  It’s all here in the Friday roundup.

Is Trust “Reasonable”

This prior post asked:

Would FCPA compliance be better achieved if companies had fewer formal internal controls and instead devoted greater effort to fostering trust within a business organization?  Would such an approach even satisfy an issuer’s obligations under the FCPA’s internal controls provisions which require that issuers devise and maintain a system of internal accounting controls sufficient to provide reasonable assurances that transactions are properly authorized, recorded, and accounted for by the issuer?

The questions are posed once again after reading this New York Times article titled “Berkshire’s Radical Strategy: Trust.”  In the article, Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (arguably one of the most well-respected companies in America) “ruminates on the state of corporate governance, offering a counternarrative to the distrustful culture of most businesses: instead of filling your ranks with lawyers and compliance people, he argued, hire people that you actually trust and let them do their job.”

As highlighted in the article:

“Here’s a little-known fact: Berkshire Hathaway, the fifth-largest company in the United States, with some $162.5 billion in revenue and 300,000 employees worldwide, has no general counsel that oversees the holding company’s dozens of units. There is no human resources department, either.

If that sounds like a corporate utopia, that’s probably because it is. To some people in this day and age — given the daily onslaught of headlines about scandal and fraud in corporate America — that also may sound almost like corporate negligence.”

Sigelman Formally Indicted

In January 2014, the DOJ announced FCPA and related charges against former executives of PetroTiger Ltd., a British Virgin Islands oil and gas company with operations in Colombia and offices in New Jersey, “for their alleged participation in a scheme to pay bribes to foreign government officials in violation of the FCPA, to defraud PetroTiger, and to launder proceeds of those crimes.”  The individuals charged were former co-CEOs of PetroTiger Joseph Sigelman and Knut Hammarskjold and former general counsel Gregory Weisman.  (See this prior post for additional details).

In this criminal complaint, Sigelman was charged with conspiracy to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions as well as three substantive FCPA charges.  The FCPA charges were based on allegations that Sigelman and others made at least four transfers of money in the approximate amount of $333,500 to an account in Colombia of a “foreign government official in Colombia.”

In this release, the DOJ announced today that Sigelman was formally criminally indicted for the same conduct.  The release states that Sigelman “charged with conspiracy to violate the FCPA and to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and substantive FCPA and money laundering violations.”

The DOJ release further states:  “The case was brought to the attention of the department through a voluntary disclosure by PetroTiger, which cooperated with the department’s investigation.”

As previously noted, both Hammarskjold and Weisman have pleaded guilty.

Scrutiny Alerts

Key Energy Services

Key Energy Services disclosed in its recent SEC filing:

“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has advised us that it is investigating possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act involving business activities of Key’s operations in Russia. We take any such allegations very seriously and are conducting an investigation into the allegations. We are fully cooperating with and sharing the results of our investigation with the Commission. While the outcome of our investigation is currently not determinable, we do not expect that it will have a material adverse effect on our consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.”

Quanta Services

Quanta Services (an engineering, procurement and construction services company) disclosed in its recent SEC filing:

“On March 10, 2014, the SEC notified Quanta of an inquiry into certain aspects of Quanta’s activities in certain foreign jurisdictions, including South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. The SEC also requested that Quanta take necessary steps to preserve and retain categories of relevant documents, including those pertaining to Quanta’s U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance program. The SEC has not alleged any violations of law by Quanta or its employees. Quanta has complied with the preservation request and is cooperating with the SEC.”

PTC Inc.

PTC Inc. (formerly known as Parametric Technology) first disclosed its FCPA scrutiny in August 2011 and recently disclosed in this  SEC filing:

“China Investigation
We have been cooperating to provide information to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice concerning payments and expenses by certain of our business partners in China and/or by employees of our Chinese subsidiary that raise questions concerning compliance with laws, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Our internal review is ongoing and now includes periods earlier than those previously examined. We continue to respond to requests for information from these agencies, including a subpoena issued to the company by the SEC. We cannot predict when or how this matter may be resolved. Resolution of this matter could include fines and penalties; however we are unable to estimate an amount that could be associated with any resolution and, accordingly, we have not recorded a liability for this matter. If resolution of this matter includes substantial fines or penalties, this could materially impact our results for the period in which the associated liability is recorded or such amounts are paid. Further, any settlement or other resolution of this matter could have collateral effects on our business in China, the United States and elsewhere.”
Fresenius Medical Care
Germany-based Fresenius Medical Care first disclosed FCPA scrutiny in August 2012 and stated as follows in its recent SEC filing:
“[The previously disclosed internal] review has identified conduct that raises concerns under the FCPA or other anti-bribery laws that may result in monetary penalties or other sanctions.  In addition, the Company’s ability to conduct business in certain jurisdictions could be negatively impacted.  The Company has recorded a non-material accrual for an identified matter.  Given the current status of the internal review, the Company cannot reasonably estimate the range of possible loss that may result from additional identified matters or from the final outcome of the continuing internal review.”
Financial Services Industry

In case you had not heard that numerous financial services companies were under FCPA scrutiny for alleged hiring practices, the Wall Street Journal reports:

“U.S. regulators have expanded their investigation into large banks’ hiring practices in Asia, seeking more information from at least five U.S. and European firms, according to people close to the probe.  The Securities and Exchange Commission in early March sent letters to a group of companies including Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG seeking more information about their hiring in Asia, according to people.  […]  The SEC late last year issued a round of letter to at least six banks, seeking information on their hiring practices, such as whether the firms had special programs dedicated to relatives of influential officials, according to people close to the inquiry.  The second round of requests reflects a deepening of the probe.  The agency is seeking more data on the banks’ recruiting in Asia, including lists of employees hired as a result of referrals from foreign officials and clients, added the people familiar with the investigation.”

As to the above, Goldman disclosed in its most recent SEC filing:

“Regulatory Investigations and Reviews and Related Litigation.

[The company] and certain of its affiliates are subject to a number of other investigations and reviews by, and in some cases have received subpoenas and requests for documents and information from, various governmental and regulatory bodies and self-regulatory organizations and litigation relating to various matters relating to the firm’s businesses and operations, including:

compliance with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, including with respect to the firm’s hiring practices …”

Reading Stack

No surprise that an individual who paid $174 million to post bail has hired an A-list legal team in defense of DOJ allegations that he violated, among other laws, the FCPA.  (See here for a recent New York Times article regarding Dmitry Firtash).

Sound advice from former DOJ FCPA Unit Chief Chuck Duross in this MoFo Tech article concerning FCPA risk and the technology industry:

“[T]echnology companies are also at risk from the distribution model that’s often used in the industry. Many companies sell their products to channel partners, which add some value to the product or service—such as other hardware, software, an installation, or a service plan—and then resell it at a higher price. That’s an entirely appropriate business model. But as with any third party, companies need to appreciate the potential risk if, for example, the distributor is simply reselling at a higher price without adding any legitimate value and using that profit as a slush fund to funnel bribes to government officials. It may seem to the company that it is not violating the FCPA. It has simply sold its product to another company. But if a company’s employees are aware that the distributor is paying (or just offering) bribes to government officials to help sell the product, the company and its employees could be criminally liable as conspirators and aiders and abettors.

What should tech companies be doing to avoid these issues?

One thing is to know the third parties they’re doing business with. It is also fundamental to understand the business reason for working with third parties. One of the first questions asked during a DOJ or SEC investigation will often be, “What was the business purpose behind working with X?” Having a clear answer will earn credibility with regulators and underscore the company’s commitment to compliance. Also, making sure employees—and third parties—understand company policies, are properly trained, execute FCPA certifications, and are subject to appropriate ongoing reviews can prevent violations and mitigate (or avoid altogether) penalties if a problem does occur. That is just good business. Corruption tends to occur at companies with loose control environments. While I was at DOJ, we routinely saw loose control environments leading to embezzlement, self-dealing, fraud, and even antitrust violations. When a company doesn’t know where its money is going, that’s bad business and negatively impacts shareholder value. When companies invest in a compliance program, they are investing in the health of the business.”

This Kyiv Post article notes:

“Some of Ukraine’s underpaid cadre of civil servants might get bonuses from international finance institutions to reduce the temptation of taking bribes. According to Ukrainian Tax Service chief Ihor Bilous, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is exploring the idea of setting up a fund that would provide officials with additional pay. ‘Last week I had a meeting with EBRD representatives and they proposed to create a fund to pay money for people who serve the state in high positions,’ Bilous told the Kyiv Post. This idea was successfully implemented in Georgia, he adds, “we need to change the system, state salaries are very low and this situation creates some kind of temptation.”

*****

A good weekend to all, and to all mothers, Happy Mother’s Day!

The U.S. Government Bears Some Responsibility

By on February 5, 2014 in Blackstone Group, CreditSuisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Libya, Myanmar, Och-Ziff Capital, Societe Generale

The U.S. government bears some responsibility when it comes to certain circumstances that result in FCPA scrutiny.  While some are likely to view this as a controversial statement or being a corporate apologist, this basic fact has always been relevant to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

As highlighted in this prior post, one of the more insightful things found in the FCPA’s extensive legislative history is an October 1975 article by Milton Gwirtzman published by the New York Times Magazine.  At this point in time, Congress was in the midst of its investigations into the so-called foreign corporate payments problem and Gwirtzman noted:

“If corporate bribery abroad has offended the post-Watergate morality, the companies implicated have nevertheless taken a greater share of the blame than they deserve.  […]  The responsibility for present practices must also be shared by our Government,  which not only encouraged investment in countries whose ethical standards differ  from ours, but also in many respects set the pattern for the graft under censure today.  […]  The rapid acceleration of American private investment in foreign lands, which began in the mid-nineteen-sixties, was seen by our foreign policy makers as a welcome opportunity.  If U.S. firms could build a nation’s infrastructure, supply its consumer goods and hire a portion of its workers, the greater the likelihood the nation would be bound to ours by the safest and strongest of ties, economic self-interest.  As a result, our Government wrote the foreign investment laws of several developing countries and urged our multinationals to make use of them.  New programs were established to insure foreign investment against the risks of war and expropriation.  Embassy personnel were ordered to scout out export possibilities for American firms, which were published in Commerce Business Daily, the Government’s daily list of business opportunities.”

Gwirtzman then stated as follows.  “For all these reasons, it would be unwise, as well as unfair, simply to write off bribery abroad to corporate lust.  It is a symbol of far deeper issues that really involve America’s role in the world.”

In 2004, the U.S. government lifted various sanctions against Libya after Moammar Kadafi agreed to abandon a nuclear weapons program.  The White House encouraged “Libya’s reintegration with the global market” and a White House statement read:  “U.S. companies will be able to buy or invest in Libyan oil and products. U.S. commercial banks and other financial service providers will be able to participate in and support these transactions.”

The front-page article earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal read “Probe Widens Into Dealings Between Finance Firms, Libya.”  The article states, in pertinent part:

“The Justice Department has joined a widening investigation of banks, private-equity firms and hedge funds that may have violated antibribery laws in their dealings with Libya’s government-run investment fund, people familiar with the matter said. The criminal investigation, which has intensified in recent months, is proceeding alongside a civil probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission that began in 2011 and initially honed in on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The Justice Department’s involvement hasn’t been reported previously. In addition to Goldman Sachs, federal investigators are examining Credit Suisse Group AG , J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Société Générale SA, private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP and hedge-fund operator Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, these people said. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the SEC declined to comment.  Authorities are examining investment deals made around the time of the financial crisis and afterward, these people said. In the years leading up to Libya’s 2011 revolution, Western firms—encouraged by the U.S. government—raced to attract investment money from the North African nation, which was benefiting from oil sales and recently had opened to foreign investment. Investigators are trying to determine whether the firms violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the people said.

[…]

The U.S. lifted sanctions against Libya in 2004 in return for the country’s dismantling of its nuclear-weapons program. By 2008, as the financial crisis set in, Western firms were jockeying for business there. That year, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya and met with Col. Gadhafi in part to improve the investment climate there for U.S. companies, she said at the time. The government advised companies on investing in Libya, and U.S. executives went there on a government-sponsored trade mission in 2010.”

Whether its leading trade missions, providing export financing or provide support through diplomatic channels, in certain instances the U.S. government encourages companies (for foreign policy and other strategic interests) to go to the edge of the cliff.  As the passage of time occasionally shows, when the footing on the cliff becomes a bit loose, and the market participants fall over the edge, other segments of the U.S. government then launch a criminal inquiry seeking to discover why.

As I told a Foreign Policy reporter earlier this week in connection with the recent news:

“There is an irony of course in the U.S. government encouraging companies to do business in certain countries because it serves U.S. interests.  Then when the company does business in that country and encounters business conditions that the U.S. government no doubt knew it was going to encounter, the company then becomes the subject of a U.S. law enforcement inquiry.”

As so it goes.

If not before, I predict I will write about this issue again in the next few years when the DOJ and SEC launch an FCPA inquiry of various companies doing business in Myanmar.  In case you haven’t heard, the U.S. government recently eased various restrictions relevant to doing business in that country and is actively encouraging companies to toe the cliff.

Friday Roundup

By on January 3, 2014 in Citigroup, CreditSuisse, Deutsche Bank, Financial Services Industry, Goldman Sachs, H-P, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Related Foreign Investigations, SEC, Siemens Argentina Enforcement Action, UBS, Year in Review 2013

Scrutiny alerts and updates, sunshine, year in review roundups, and for the reading stack.  It’s all here in the Friday roundup.

Scrutiny Alerts and Updates

H-P

The company has been under FCPA scrutiny since at least 2010 and recently disclosed, in pertinent part, as follows.

“The U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC have been conducting an investigation into the Russia GPO deal and potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). These U.S. enforcement agencies, as well as the Polish Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, are also conducting investigations into potential FCPA violations by an employee of Hewlett-Packard Polska Sp. z o.o., an indirect subsidiary of HP, in connection with certain public-sector transactions in Poland. In addition, the same U.S. enforcement agencies are conducting investigations into certain other public-sector transactions in Russia, Poland, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Mexico, among other countries.  HP is cooperating with these investigating agencies. In addition, HP is in advanced discussions with the U.S. enforcement agencies to resolve their investigations.”

JPMorgan

The New York Times returned – yet again (see here and here for prior NY Times article) – to JPMorgan’s hiring practices in China.  The article states:

“For Wall Street banks enduring slowdowns in the wake of the financial crisis, China was the last great gold rush. As its economy boomed, China’s state-owned enterprises were using banks to raise billions of dollars in stock and debt offerings — yet JPMorgan was falling further behind in capturing that business.  The solution, the executives decided over email, was to embrace the strategy that seemed to work so well for rivals: hire the children of China’s ruling elite.

[…]

In the months and years that followed, emails and other confidential documents show, JPMorgan escalated what it called its “Sons and Daughters” hiring program, adding scores of well-connected employees and tracking how those hires translated into business deals with the Chinese government. The previously unreported emails and documents — copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times — offer a view into JPMorgan’s motivations for ramping up the hiring program, suggesting that competitive pressures drove many of the bank’s decisions that are now under federal investigation.

The references to other banks in the emails also paint for the first time a broad picture of questionable hiring practices by other Wall Street banks doing business in China — some of them hiring the same employees with family connections. Since opening a bribery investigation into JPMorgan this spring, the authorities have expanded the inquiry to include hiring at other big banks. Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have previously been identified as coming under scrutiny. A sixth bank, UBS, is also facing scrutiny, according to interviews with current and former Wall Street employees.

[…]

The investigation has also had a chilling effect on JPMorgan’s deal-making in China, interviews show. The bank, seeking to build good will with federal authorities, has considered forgoing certain deals in China and abandoned one assignment altogether.”

Once again, the latest NY Times article sparked much commentary.  See here, here and here.

Former Siemens Executives

The Buenos Aires Herald reports:

“Seventeen people, including former managers of the Siemens company, were … accused of paying off officials in order to help win a contract to produce the national identity cards …”.  The decision was made by Federal Judge Ariel Lijo, who decided to indict them for having allegedly committed bribery.”

Regarding the defendants, the article states:

“Twelve people working for Siemens were included in the indictment: Uriel Jonathan Sharef, Ulrich Albert Otto Fritz Bock, Eberhard George Reichert, Luis Rodolfo Schirado, Andrés Ricardo Truppel, Ernst Michael Brechtel, Bernd Regendatz, Ralph Matthias Kleinhempel and José Alberto Ares. Sharef, for instance, was a member of Siemens’ managing board. He also was the first former board member of a Fortune Global 50 company to be indicted under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as happened in 2011.  Judge Lijo also charged Carlos Francisco Soriano, Miguel Ángel Czysch and José Antonio David as “middlemen” between the company and Menem’s administration to arrange the payment for benefitting the company in the bid. The magistrate also accused Antonio Justo Solsona, Guillermo Andrés Romero, Orlando Salvestrini, Luis Guillermo Cudmani and Federico Rossi Beguy, who allegedly worked for the company competing in the bid against Siemens IT Services and who presumably agreed not to challenge the government’s decision.”

Allegations regarding the Argentine identity card project were included in the 2008 FCPA enforcement action against Siemens (see here) and also served as the basis for 2011 criminal and civil charges against several former Siemens executives, including those recently charged in Argentina (see here for the prior post summarizing the action).

As noted in this previous post, the U.S. charges against the former Siemens executives were brought after the DOJ faced scrutiny (including at the Senate’s 2010 FCPA hearing) for not bringing any individual enforcement action in connection with a bribery scheme “unprecedented in scale and geographic reach” in which there existed at Siemens a “corporate culture in which bribery was tolerated and even rewarded at the highest levels of the company.”

The U.S. criminal charges against former Siemens executives sits on the docket and a recent docket search indicates that there has not been any activity in the case in over two years.

Sunshine

Mark Cuban, who recently prevailed against the SEC in a long-running insider trading enforcement action, says in this Wall Street Journal article that he is “now considering a new venture publicizing SEC transcripts.”  Says Cuban, “I’m going to get as many as I can, and I’ll put it out there.” “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

The article further states:

“Mr. Cuban says he isn’t against the SEC as a whole but thinks that the lawyers who work there should be held responsible for their actions. “There’s such a revolving door, and it was run by attorneys with an attorney’s mind-set looking for their next job,” he says. “It’s a résumé builder.” Mr. Cuban says individual lawyers aren’t held accountable because the public is familiar only with the name of the SEC’s chair, Mary Jo White.  “No wonder they say or do whatever they damn well please,” he says. “I’m like, ‘OK, I’m going to start calling them out by name.’  George Canellos, co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division, sent a response to Mr. Cuban’s statements through an SEC spokesperson: “Mr. Cuban’s comments are without merit and uncalled for. Our lawyers acted in the finest traditions of government counsel and entirely appropriately in strongly advocating the position of the government in this matter.”

On a related note, did you know that the FCPA Professor Scribd page contains approximately 250 hard to find FCPA documents, pleadings, briefs, etc.

Year In Review Roundups

From the Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance Journal page – a “Q&A with Asheesh Goel, Ropes & Gray, on The Year in FCPA”

From Trace Blog – “FCPA Corporate Settlements by the Numbers”

From Michael Volkov (Corruption, Crime & Compliance) – “The FCPA Person of the Year – The Prosecutor” and “FCPA Predictions for the New Year – 2014”

From Thomas Fox (FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog) – “My Favorite Blog Posts from 2013”

Reading Stack

Thomas Fox (FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog) and Jon Rydberg (Orchid Advisor) are out with a new book here titled “Anti-Bribery Leadership: Practical FCPA and U.K Bribery Act Compliance Concepts for the Corporate Board Member, C-Suite Executive and General Counsel.”

*****

A good weekend to all.

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