Category: Declination Decisions

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matthew Miner On ….

Recently Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matthew Miner delivered this speech at an American Bar Association event in Prague.

During the speech, Miner touched upon international cooperation; the DOJ’s so-called “no piling on” policy; the DOJ’s “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs” guidance document; gathering evidence in foreign countries; voluntary disclosure, cooperation and so-called declinations; and enforcement actions against foreign companies.

Friday Roundup

Transparency, hilarious, fact-checking, little sense, just saying, and for the reading and listening stack. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.

Transparency

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) recently this document titled “Baker’s Dozen: 13 Policy Areas That Require Congressional Action” noting that a “lack of transparency around enforcement of the FCPA leaves lingering questions about its utility.” POGO then proposes:

Back To The 1980’s

The 1980’s saw Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement activity (see here for a summary of actions) as well as legislative developments as the FCPA – after several years of consideration – was finally amended in 1988.

Beyond these developments, there was also much FCPA media coverage on a range of topics and this post excerpts certain articles found in the Wall Street Journal during the 1980s.

Among other things, this media coverage demonstrates that there was angst regarding the ambiguous FCPA and that several companies were the subject of FCPA scrutiny without ultimately resolving an enforcement action. In the modern era, some have wrongly used the term “declination” to refer to such an event, but such events have occurred throughout FCPA history as the government routinely did not bring “flimsy,” “implausible” or “unproven” (terms used in the media coverage) enforcement actions.

Principal Deputy Assistant AG Cronan Delivers Yet Another FCPA Speech

On October 18th, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Cronan delivered a speech in Brazil at an event hosted by a for-profit business that generally charges people to attend (see here for the prior post). On October 25th, Cronan delivered another speech in Washington, D.C. at another event hosted by the same for-profit business.

Why DOJ (and SEC) officials allows themselves to be used in such a way by profit-seeking businesses to drive attendance to their events is beyond me. (See prior posts here and here, among many others, for why the selling of FCPA enforcement attorneys needs to stop).

Ethics aside, in his speech Cronan talked about the DOJ’s priorities with respect to corporate enforcement, what the DOJ expects “from companies who choose to voluntarily self-disclose misconduct and seek to cooperate with law enforcement,” and the DOJ’s “commitment to reaching fair and equitable resolutions, including through the principles reflected in the Criminal Division’s policy with respect to monitors.”