Checking In On The Wakil Enforcement Action
As highlighted in this prior post, in August 2021 the DOJ announced that Naman Wakil, a Syrian national and U.S. lawful permanent resident, was “arrested in Miami on charges related to his alleged role in a scheme to bribe Venezuelan officials and launder funds to obtain contracts from Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), and Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled food company that purchased food for Venezuela, Corporación de Abastecimiento y Servicios Agrícola (CASA).”
Recently, Wakil (through his attorneys Stephen Binhak and Black Srebnick attorneys Howard Srebnick and Jackie Perczek) filed three motions.
The first motion is a motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state an offense and states in summary:
A Reminder Why Congress Chose To Exempt Facilitating Payments From The Reach Of The FCPA’s Anti-Bribery Provisions
The State Department recently released this Investment Climate Statement for Côte d’Ivoire. It caught my eye not because Côte d’Ivoire is a prominent market for U.S. business, but rather because information in the statement provides a nice reminder why Congress chose to exempt facilitation payments from the reach of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions and how the same conditions motivating Congress to exempt facilitation payments are still present today.
In pertinent part, the statement reads:
Issues To Consider From The Stericycle Enforcement Action
This previous post highlighted the recent net $59 million Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action against Stericycle (an Illinois based medical waste disposal company) for conduct in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina.
Portions of the alleged conduct were egregious in that an executive of the company’s Latin America division orchestrated the bribery schemes and others associated with the company used “spreadsheets to track the bribe payments.”
Nevertheless, there are several legal and policy issues to consider from the enforcement action.
Timeline
As highlighted in this post, Stericycle disclosed its FCPA scrutiny in mid-2017.
Friday Roundup
Scrutiny alerts and updates and that is why Congress included a facilitation payment exception in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
It’s all here in the Friday Roundup.
Scrutiny Alerts and Updates
Raytheon
The Wall Street Journal reports:
A Reminder Why Congress Chose To Exempt Facilitating Payments From The Reach Of The FCPA’s Anti-Bribery Provisions
The State Department recently released this Investment Climate Statement for the Dominican Republic. It caught my eye not because the Dominican Republic is a prominent market for U.S. business, but rather because information in the statement provides a nice reminder why Congress chose to exempt facilitation payments from the reach of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions.
In pertinent part, the statement reads:
“Foreign investors report numerous systemic problems in the Dominican Republic and cite a lack of clear, standardized rules by which to compete and a lack of enforcement of existing rules. Complaints include allegations of widespread corruption; requests for bribes; delays in government payments; weak intellectual property rights enforcement; bureaucratic hurdles; slow and sometimes locally biased judicial and administrative processes, and non-standard procedures in customs valuation and classification of imports. Weak land tenure laws and government expropriations without due compensation continue to be a problem. The public perceives administrative and judicial decision-making to be inconsistent, opaque, and overly time-consuming. Corruption and poor implementation of existing laws are widely discussed as key investor grievances.”