A Q&A Regarding “A Common Language to Remedy Distorted FCPA Enforcement Statistics”
My article “A Common Language to Remedy Distorted FCPA Enforcement Statistics” (click here to download) was recently published in the Rutgers Law Review.
The article discusses how various FCPA Inc. participants have adopted creative and haphazard counting methods that infect the quality and reliability of FCPA enforcement and related statistics of interest to many in the legal and business communities. The article also highlights how the lack of an FCPA common language has several negative effects including the quality of FCPA lawyering, the quality of empirical FCPA research, and the quality of FCPA reporting by the media.
The article concludes by proposing a FCPA common language that can improve the quality and reliability of FCPA statistics and thus allow a more cogent conversation to take place regarding FCPA issues.
I elaborate on various issues discussed in the article in a Q&A recently published in Bloomberg BNA’s White Collar Crime Report – “How a Common Language for the FCPA Would Help all Participants” (May 13, 2016).
The Q&A is set forth below.
Friday Roundup
DOJ seeks legislative changes, a focus on FCPA Inc., credit ratings, across the pond, scrutiny update, and for the reading stack.
It’s all here in the Friday Roundup
DOJ Seeks Legislative Changes
The DOJ’s efforts to eradicate corruption and bribery is broader than just Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement and includes: “public integrity prosecutions, bribery prosecutions, prosecutions of taxpayers who seek to conceal foreign accounts, money laundering prosecutions, [and its] Kleptocracy Initiative.”
Desired Attributes For The Next DOJ FCPA Unit Chief
While I have a different perspective regarding the tenure of certain prior DOJ FCPA Unit Chiefs (see here for the prior post), I enjoyed Paul Pellitier’s (a former Principal Deputy Chief of the DOJ’s fraud section) recent post regarding the desired qualifications for the next DOJ FCPA Unit Chief and second many of his recommendations.
This post adds to the desired attributes for the next DOJ FCPA Unit Chief (and for that matter any DOJ or SEC FCPA enforcement attorney in a supervisory position).
Business Chops
It’s been said that when you possess a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.
The analogy should be obvious to the FCPA enforcement context and thus prior prosecution experience is not necessarily a desired attribute for the next FCPA Unit Chief (as it has been for others previously in this position).
Rather, it would be nice to see an FCPA Unit Chief with bona fide, real-world business chops.
Friday Roundup
A plethora of scrutiny alerts and updates and for the reading stack. It’s all here in the Friday Roundup.
Scrutiny Alerts and Updates
Unaoil Related
The disclosures keep coming from companies mentioned in the recent Unaoil media reports (see here for the prior post).
FMC Technologies, an oil and gas services company, recently disclosed:
“On March 28, 2016 we received an inquiry from the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) related to the DOJ’s investigation of whether certain services Unaoil S.A.M. provided to its clients, including FMC Technologies, violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We are cooperating with the DOJ’s inquiry and are conducting our own internal investigation.”
KBR, a company which resolved an FCPA enforcement action in 2009 concerning conduct in Nigeria , recently disclosed:
Lessons Learned From …
Imagine this post was titled “Lesson Learned from the NBA Playoffs.” I hope your reaction would be – well gosh, the NBA playoffs are merely in the second round. There are nearly two full months of basketball yet to be played.
Similarly if this post was titled “Lesson Learned from the 2016 Presidential Election,” again I hope your reaction would be – well gosh, sure there have been long, often brutal primary elections, but the general election is just beginning.
So why then do many (certainly not all) Foreign Corrupt Practices Act commentators publish articles, posts, etc. on purported lessons learned when: (i) they lack first hand information concerning the specific facts or circumstances at issue, but are merely relying on second-hand accounts often by non-lawyer journalists writing a story; and/or (ii) the specific issue has merely just begun, the situation remains fluid, and the end-result is unknown?