Category: FCPA Reform

Friday Roundup

The SEC’s annual whistleblower report, a new FCPA map, taking FCPA reform too far, confessions of an FCPA “Mendelhead,” is too much FCPA training a bad thing, and Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund … it’s all here in the Friday roundup.

SEC Whistleblower Report

The Dodd-Frank Act enacted in July 2010 contained whistleblower provisions applicable to all securities law violations including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  In this prior post from July 2010, I predicted that the new whistleblower provisions would have a negligible impact on FCPA enforcement.  As noted in this prior post, my prediction was an outlier (so it seemed) compared to the flurry of law firm client alerts that predicted that the whistleblower provisions would have a significant impact on FCPA enforcement.

Whatever your view, I noted that the best part of the new whistleblower provisions were that its impact on FCPA enforcement can be monitored and analyzed because the SEC is required to submit annual reports to Congress.  Recently the SEC released (here) its annual report for FY2011.  However as noted by the SEC, “because the Final Rules [implementing the whistleblower program] became effective August 12, 2011, only 7 weeks of whistleblower tip data is available for fiscal year 2011.”

Appendix A to the report lists by subject matter “the 334 whistleblower tips received from August 12, 2011 through September 30, 2011.”   However, the SEC noted as follows.  “Of course, the Commission also receive [Tips, Complaints, and Referrals (“TCRs”] from individuals who do not wish or are not eligible to be considered for an award under the whistleblower program.  The data in this report is limited to those TCR’s that include the required whistleblower declaration and does not reflect all TCRs received by the Commission during the fiscal year.”

As the SEC notes “as a result of the relatively recent launch of the program and the small sample size, it is to early to identify any specific trends or conclusions from the data collected to data.”

In any event, a chart titled “Whistleblower Tips by Allegation Type” in the SEC report shows that 3.9% of the 334 tips involve the FCPA.  The SEC report is also an informative read as to the SEC’s implementation of the whistleblower award program and how it processes whistleblower tips.

The SEC whistleblower report from FY2010 is here.

FCPA Map

The Mintz Group (an international investigative services firm that specializes in FCPA and integrity due-diligence that also assists corporate counsel and outside counsel with investigations related to potential or alleged FCPA violations) recently released here a dandy interactive map allowing users to scroll over countries and learn of FCPA violations in those countries, as well as industry specific FCPA data.

Taking FCPA Reform Too Far

Writing recently at the Cato Institute’s blog (see here), Walter Olson commented “the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act:  clarification is not enough.”  Olson stated as follows.  “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, enacted in 1977 and the subject of a high-profile federal enforcement campaign in recent years, is a feel-good piece of overcriminalization that oversteps the proper bounds of federal lawmaking in at least four distinct ways, any of which should have prevented its passage. It is extraterritorial, purporting to punish overseas misdeeds which deprive no Americans of liberty or property and whose punishment is better left in the hands of authorities elsewhere. It is vicarious, inflicting massive liability on businesses and unknowing higher-ups over the actions of rogue local subsidiaries, salespeople and facilitators. It is punitive, menacing its targets with twenty-year prison terms and inflicting huge penalties over less-than-huge misbehavior. And finally, it is vague, leaving companies to guess at the proper line between tolerated payments (e.g., gratuities to speed up visa and license issuance in developing countries) and improper “bribes,” and even such basic questions as who counts as “official.” In the face of a mounting outcry from the business community, the Obama administration has now finally conceded that there is some validity to this last point, and Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer says the Department of Justice will develop guidelines to provide greater clarity as to what it believes the law does and does not forbid. Better than nothing, but why not consider the case for wider reform or even repeal?”

Similarly, Scott Greenfield who runs the blog Simple Justice (see here) stated as follows.  “At its core, the FCPA is our government’s way of pretending to be the mean old school marm, telling all the nasty children of the world how to behave.  If it doesn’t appeal to the school marm’s sensibilities, then it’s a crime, and demands a hard smack across the knuckles.  A very expensive hard smack. […]   We may hate corporations, but we need them, and we need them to be productive around the globe.  To tie them down because of vague, child-like notions of fairness that conflict with cultural norms everywhere else is just foolish and counterproductive. Surviving and competing in foreign cultures isn’t wrong, and it shouldn’t be a crime. The FCPA has got to go.”

I respectfully disagree.  While I agree that the FCPA ought to be reformed in certain respects and while FCPA enforcement has become unhinged, I do believe, as I have stated on several occasions including in my November 2010 Senate testimony (here), that the FCPA is a fundamentally sound statute that was passed by Congress for a specific valid and legitimate reason.

Confessions Of An FCPA “Mendelhead”

In response to my recent “luncheon law” post (see here), Howard Sklar (who previously ran anti-corruption compliance for Hewlett-Packard Co.) wrote on his Open Air Blog (here) as follows.  “I used to go to these conferences with the expressed purpose of ‘reading the DOJ tea leaves for this season.’  The ‘used to’ in that sentence is important, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Because ‘reading the tea leaves’ was a crucial part of my risk assessment process. That’s a pitiful state of affairs, but there you are. During that period, several years ago, there really wasn’t anywhere else to go. I would reach out to fellow in-house practitioners and benchmark all the time, and I’d follow Mark Mendelsohn around like a puppy looking for scraps. It was a little sad, really. I know I’m a bit of a geek, and I know Mark Mendelsohn ain’t the Grateful Dead. But there I was, an FCPA Mendelhead.”

Over-Training?

Greg Esslinger (Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting) recently posted (here) an interesting article on the ABA’s Global Anti-Corruption Task Force website.  Titled “Anti-Corruption Compliance:  Are Employees Becoming ‘Over-Trained’?”  Esslinger writes as follows.  “In response [to this new era of enforcement], companies have begun to provide more and more accessible (read: web-based) anti-corruption and related regulatory training programs.  Predictably, a panoply of vendors have surfaced offering state-of-the-art customizable online training modules, complete with scenarios, live actors, knowledge checks and certifications.  Online compliance training has now become a cottage industry serving a wide array of organizations faced with the daunting task of communicating a Western regulatory concept to tens of thousands of employees across multiple languages, cultures and jurisdictions – again, under the watchful eye of various enforcement bodies.”  In the piece, Esslinger asks “whether repeated online and other mass training will over time actually have the unintended effect of desensitizing employees to, rather than making them more aware and cautious of, bribery and other corrupt activity.”

Training occurs in a variety of legal and non-legal contexts and if anyone is aware of social-science / behavioral research relevant to an “over-training” phenomena please share.

Nigeria Sovereign Wealth Fund

With certain companies reportedly under the FCPA microscope for dealings with sovereign wealth funds (see here for a prior post), its hard not to have the FCPA radars go off when reading this recent article by Azam Ahmed in the New York Times concerning Nigeria’s new sovereign wealth fund.  The article states as follows.  “In an effort to preserve and increase its oil revenue, the country recently established a so-called sovereign wealth fund, following the path of many resource-rich countries. Now, Wall Street titans like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase are courting top government officials, aiming to grab a piece of a portfolio that could eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars.”  The article further states as follows.  “To grab a piece of the lucrative business, big banks and asset managers have tirelessly cultivated relationships with governments worldwide and added teams dedicated to sovereign wealth funds. In recent months, bankers, lawyers and consultants flew to the Nigerian capital of Abuja to pitch officials on their services. The government chose JPMorgan Chase as one of its advisers on the structuring of the fund.”

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A good weekend to all.

DOJ Guidance – Better Late Than Never, But Will It Matter?

The FCPA’s 1988 amendments required that the Attorney General, “after consultation with the [the SEC], the Secretary of Commerce, the United States Trade Representative, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury, and after obtaining the views of all interested persons through public notice and comment procedures, shall determine to what extent compliance with [the anti-bribery provisions] would be enhanced and the business community would be assisted by further clarification” of its various provisions.  Among other things, Congress requested that the Attorney General consider issuing guidelines as to “general precautionary procedures [companies] may use on a voluntary basis to conform their conduct to the Department of Justice’s present enforcement policy …”.

Following the 1988 Congressional mandate, the DOJ did issue a formal notice inviting all interested persons “to submit their views concerning the extent to which compliance with [the anti-bribery provisions] would be enhanced and the business community assisted by further clarification of the provisions of the anti-bribery provisions through the issuance of guidelines.”  However, the DOJ stated that “only 5 responses were received, and 3 of the responses were to the effect that guidelines were unnecessary” and based on this information it declined to issue FCPA compliance guidelines envisioned by Congress.  In July 1990, the DOJ stated as follows.  “After consideration of the comments received, and after consultation with the appropriate agencies, the Attorney General has determined that no guidelines are necessary…. [C]ompliance with the [anti-bribery provisions] would not be enhanced nor would the business community be assisted by further clarification of these provisions through the issuance of guidelines.”

With that historical background, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer made a noteworthy statement Tuesday before an FCPA audience when he stated that in 2012 the DOJ hopes to “release detailed new guidance on the [FCPA’s] criminal and civil enforcement provisions.”  (See here for Breuer’s speech).

If nothing else, Breuer’s statement appears to represent a welcome attitudinal shift at the DOJ and hopefully adoption of an approach more like the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office of active engagement on compliance as opposed to just enforcement.  Incidentally, in Lamb v. Phillip Morris Inc., 915 F.2d 1024 (6th Cir. 1990) the court noted that the above FCPA legislative history “clearly evinces a preference for compliance in lieu of prosecution” in ruling that a private right of action and the “introduction of private plaintiffs interested solely in post-violation enforcement, rather than pre-violation compliance, most assuredly would hinder congressional efforts to protect companies and their employees concerned about FCPA liability.”

While a welcome development, DOJ’s promise of FCPA guidance in 2012 will not cure many of the issues that are being debated in good faith during this new era of FCPA enforcement.  I expect DOJ’s guidance to be little more than a compilation in one document of information that is already in the public domain for those who know where to look.  For instance, does anyone think that DOJ’s guidance on “foreign official” will be substantively different from its briefs in the Carson “foreign official” challenge?  Does anyone think that DOJ’s guidance on compliance best practices will be substantively different from the information already contained in DOJ non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements?  And whatever DOJ’s guidance is on compliance does it even matter?  Perhaps in the opaque, inconsistent and unpredictable world of DOJ decision making under the Principles of Prosecution of Business Organizations and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, but not as a matter of law.

Whenever released and whatever it says, the DOJ’s guidance will be merely that – guidance.  What the FCPA needs is not guidance, but limited structural reforms (such as a compliance defense) as well as a change in DOJ policy (such as elimination of non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements).

See here and here for what others are saying about the DOJ’s pledge to issue guidance.

As to FCPA reform, Breuer stated as follows in his speech.  “I am aware that there have been a number of efforts made this year to amend the FCPA, by the Chamber of Commerce and others.  We in the Justice Department are always open – and I personally am – to working with Congress on ways to improve our criminal laws.  That said, I want to be clear about one thing with respect to these proposals:  we have no intention whatsoever of supporting reforms whose aim is to weaken the FCPA and make it a less effective tool for fighting foreign bribery.   Indeed, at this crucial moment in history, watering down the Act – by eliminating successor liability in the FCPA context, for example – would send exactly the wrong message.  Particularly since it has become increasingly clear over the past year that the trend across the globe is toward criminalization of foreign bribery.  The U.K. Bribery Act took effect in July.  Russia recently passed an anti-bribery law; has ratified the U.N. Convention against Corruption; and is expected soon to accede to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.  China, too, recently passed an anti-bribery law and is an observer at the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery.  […]  [The FCPA’s] passage in 1977 was a milestone.  But it took decades for the Act to become as strong an enforcement tool as it is today.  Having come this far, on what I believe is a noble journey, we cannot, and should not, start going backwards.  On the contrary, the United States must continue leading the charge against transnational bribery.  […]  In the United States, we have taken a strong stand against corruption, and the tide has been turning that same way in many countries across the globe – both as measured by the number of nations that have passed anti-bribery statutes in the past decade and by the recent popular uprisings that have been fueled, at least in part, by public outrage over corruption.   This is precisely the wrong moment in history to weaken the FCPA.  To the contrary, whether or not certain clarifications to the Act are appropriate, now is the time to ensure that the FCPA remains a strong tool for fighting the ill effects of transnational bribery.  There is no argument for becoming more permissive when it comes to corruption.  Indeed, for the reasons I have articulated, we may together have no greater mission than to work toward eradicating corruption across the globe.  The FCPA is an important mechanism for holding individuals and corporations accountable for fostering corruption abroad, and for motivating others to act responsibly.  We must ensure that it stays that way.”

While Breuer is indeed correct that there is a global trend towards criminalization of bribery and that the U.S. should continue the charge against transnational bribery, it does not follow that FCPA reform will defeat these objectives or be viewed by the world community as waving the white flag of surrender on bribery.  For instance, should the FCPA be amended to include a compliance defense, the FCPA would become similar to the FCPA-like laws of several other OECD Convention countries – see here for a prior post on the compliance defense around the world.  Should FCPA enforcement on successor liability by revisited, the U.S. approach would align with the U.K. approach – see here and here for prior posts containing comments from U.K. SFO Director Richard Alderman on M&A liability issues.

Finally, in his speech Breuer also discussed the DOJ’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.  He stated as follows. “I am firmly convinced that we cannot win our fight against global corruption unless we deprive corrupt foreign officials of the ability to use the United States as a safe haven for their ill-gotten gains.  That is the purpose of our now fully operational Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative .  With this initiative, which I told you last year we were developing, we are working hard to identify, and recover, the proceeds of foreign official corruption through civil forfeiture.  Last month, we announced our most significant Kleptocracy actions to date:  two civil forfeiture complaints filed against $70 million in assets allegedly belonging to Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, a government minister for Equatorial Guinea and the son of that country’s president.  According to the complaints, despite an official government salary of less than $100,000 per year, Minister Obiang corruptly amassed wealth of more than $100 million.  Among the items that we are seeking to forfeit are $1.8 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia, a $38.5 million Gulfstream G-V jet, a $30 million house in Malibu, California and a 2011 Ferrari valued at more than $530,000.”

ABA Ponders FCPA Reform

Add the American Bar Association (“ABA”) to the list of organizations seeking a voice in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act reform discussions.

On October 29, 2011, T. Markus Funk (Perkins Coie – here), a litigation and white collar criminal defense and investigations partner specializing in corporate FCPA compliance and internal investigations, was asked to weigh in on the FCPA debate on behalf of the US and global business community.  Funk, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago and US State Department lawyer who has also taught criminal and international law at Oxford University, Northwestern and the University of Chicago, and who co-chairs the ABA’s Global Anti-Corruption Task Force (here), formally presented a proposed Resolution, which was supported by the current and incoming Chairs of the ABA Criminal Justice Section, to more than 40 ABA Section Council Members. 

By its terms, the draft Resolution calls for targeted reform of the FCPA in an effort to increase the statute’s transparency and fairness, to remove specific areas of textual ambiguity, and to, in so doing, provide the world’s business community with more nuanced mapping of the FCPA’s scope and applicability.  The Resolution, for example, calls on Congress to provide a definition for the term “instrumentality [of a foreign government],” to consider a UK Bribery Act-style compliance defense to protect companies against the difficult-to-control acts of rogue employees/transaction partners, and to limit criminal liability based on theories of successor liability. 

Although the Resolution applauds the work done by DOJ and the SEC to ensure that anti-corruption laws are taken seriously and to lead the global push for greater anti-corruption compliance, it warns of the danger that, because of the FCPA’s loose drafting, it lends itself to being transformed from a criminal proscription carrying moral condemnation to a public welfare offense less likely to deter future misconduct, and with more limited focus on punishing the truly “guilty mind.”  The draft Resolution asks the US Congress for certain FCPA amendments that have resonated with the US and international business community. 

Deputy Chief of DOJ’s Criminal Division and the head of DOJ’s FCPA Unit, Charles Duross, personally appeared to debate the draft Resolution with Funk.  Following the wide-ranging discussion, which lasted over an hour, the Council tabled a vote on the matter until early next year, asking Funk and Duross to work together to provide the Council additional background information so that both sides of the discussion are fully elaborated on. 

Funk declined to discuss the details of the pending draft Resolution, but said that “this is a key public policy debate, and one I am honored to have been asked to help lead through the Resolution and by advancing the discussion on behalf of the business community.   What we are involved in is an honest, good-natured disagreement over statutory drafting, criminal law theory, and public policy questions.  I look forward to working with Mr. Duross and his colleagues to continue the constructive dialogue.  I am certain that together we will provide the ABA Council members with the information and arguments needed to render a full and informed decision on this important issue of great concern to the public, my clients, and the world’s business community.”

A Renewed Declination Proposal

According to an October 28th article by Mary Jacoby in Main Justice, “Duross on Declinations,”  DOJ FCPA Unit Chief Charles Duross was recently asked whether the DOJ would publish information on its FCPA declination decisions.  According to the article, Duross said he was not “particularly comfortable doing it” and that disclosing declinations was a “very foreign concept” to him.  Duross is quoted as saying that DOJ doesn’t “disclose declinations of drug cases or bank robberies” and he “likes to think [that DOJ treats FCPA cases] like any other criminal case.”

However, FCPA cases are not like other criminal cases.  The majority of corporate FCPA enforcement actions are voluntarily disclosed, drug cases and bank robberies are not ordinarily voluntarily disclosed, and therein lies the difference.

My proposal (see here for the prior post from August 2010 when I first made this proposal in the aftermath of Digi International’s disappearance act)  is triggered when a company voluntarily discloses an FCPA internal investigation to the DOJ  and when the DOJ declines enforcement.  In these situations, it is in the public interest to require the DOJ  to publicly state, in a thorough and transparent manner, the facts the company disclosed to the DOJ and why the DOJ declined enforcement on those facts.

Here is why I think the proposal makes sense and is in the public interest.

For starters, the DOJ is already enthusiastic when it comes to talking about FCPA issues. Enforcement attorneys from both the DOJ are frequent participants on the FCPA conference circuit and there seems to be no other single law that is the focus of more DOJ speeches than the FCPA. Thus, there is clearly enthusiasm and ambition at the DOJ when it comes to the FCPA.

Further, the DOJ has the resources to accomplish this task as it has touted its increased FCPA resources and the new personnel hired to focus on the FCPA. Combine enthusiasm and ambition with sufficient resources and personnel and the proposal certainly seems doable.

Most important, the DOJ is already used to this type of exercise. It is called the FCPA Opinion Procedure Release  a process the DOJ frequently urges those subject to the FCPA to utilize.

Under the Opinion Procedure regulations, an issuer or domestic concern subject to the FCPA can voluntarily disclose prospective business conduct to the DOJ which then has 30 days to respond to the request by issuing an opinion that states whether the prospective conduct would, for purposes of the DOJ’s present enforcement policy, violate the FCPA.

The DOJ’s opinions are publicly released  and the FCPA bar and the rest of FCPA Inc. study these opinions in great detail in advising clients largely because of the general lack of substantive FCPA case law.

If the DOJ is able to issue an enforcement opinion as to voluntarily disclosed prospective conduct there seems to be no principled reason why the enforcement agencies could not issue a non-enforcement opinion as to voluntarily disclosed actual conduct

Such agency opinions would seem to be more valuable to those subject to the FCPA than the already useful FCPA Opinion Procedure Releases. If the enforcement agencies are sincere about providing guidance on the FCPA, as they presumably are, such agency opinions would seem to provide an ideal platform to accomplish such a purpose.

Requiring the enforcement agencies to disclose non-enforcement decisions after a voluntary disclosure could also inject some much needed discipline into the voluntary disclosure decision itself – a decision which seems to be reflexive in many instances any time facts suggest the FCPA may be implicated.

Notwithstanding the presence of significant conflicting incentives to do otherwise, it is hoped that FCPA counsel advises clients to disclose only if a reasonably certain legal conclusion has been reached that the conduct at issue actually violates the FCPA.  Accepting this assumption, transparency in FCPA enforcement would be enhanced if the public learned why the enforcement agencies, in the face of a voluntary disclosure, presumably disagreed with the company’s conclusion as informed by FCPA counsel.  If the enforcement agencies agreed with the conclusion that the FCPA was violated, but decided not to bring an enforcement action, transparency in FCPA enforcement would similarly be enhanced if the public learned why.

A final reason in support of the proposal is that it would give companies  a benefit by contributing to the mix of public information about the FCPA.  In most cases, companies spend millions of dollars investigating conduct that may implicate the FCPA and on the voluntary disclosure process. When the enforcement agencies decline an enforcement action, presumably because the FCPA was not violated, these costs are forever sunk and the company can legitimately ask why it just spent millions investigating and disclosing conduct that the DOJ  did not conclude violated the FCPA.

However, if the DOJ was required to publicly justify its declination decision, the company would achieve, however small, a return on its investment and contribute to the mix of public information about the FCPA – a law which the company will remain subject to long after its voluntary disclosure and long after the enforcement agencies declination decision. Thus, the company, the company’s industry peers, and indeed all those subject to the FCPA would benefit by learning more about the DOJ’s enforcement conclusions.

Transparency, accountability, useful guidance, a return on investment.

All would be accomplished by requiring the DOJ  to publicly justify a declination decision in the limited instances where no enforcement action follows a voluntary disclosure.

A Dialogue Worth Having

This previous post discussed U.K. plans to introduce U.S.-style corporate plea bargains, including deferred prosecution agreements. Among other things, the post mentioned an October 17th meeting with U.K. prosecutors at Pinset Mason’s London office.

thebriberyact.com summarizes the meeting and nicely frames the issues  here and here.    The post states as follows.  “We think that the need for DPA legislation is obvious. Its absence has often been remarked upon by the Director of the SFO and for very good reason. It is a serious hole in the UK law. Its absence has a chilling effect on the attempts to ensure that ethical attitudes become a permanent feature of corporate life in all companies, be they International, SME or small.”

Others have shared their views on whether the U.K. should adopt U.S. style alternative resolution vehicles and, if so, how.

Thomas Fox at the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog (here) believes “that the ability to enter into a DPA is a powerful tool that advances the interests of prosecutors, the judiciary and the public.”  Fox states that “the primary reason for both the prosecution and a company which violates the Bribery Act entering into a DPA is certainty.”

Ross Parlane of McGuire Woods writing at The Bribery Library (here)  states as follows.  “There are a number of benefits to be gained from giving UK prosecutors the power to negotiate DPAs.  Certainly the cost and time involved in investigating offences would be significantly reduced, which is good news for the public purse.  Further, a well negotiated DPA that gives proper attention to remediation (e.g. through monitoring) as well as to punishment, has the potential to effect a permanent positive change in the culture of an organisation.”  Yet Parlane states (and identifies) that “there are a number of tricky issues that need to be resolved before the use of deferred prosecution agreements can be adopted in the the U.K.”

Michael Volkov, writing at thebriberyact.com (here) notes that “for UK policymakers, the balance between judicial review and prosecutorial discretion is one which has to be resolved before any new policy can be enacted.”

Let me contribute to the dialogue by posing this question.  Why does a law with an adequate procedures defense require the third option of a deferred prosecution agreement – the first two options being prosecute vs. not prosecute?

If a corporate has adequate procedures, but an isolated act of bribery nevertheless occurs within its organization, the corporate presumably would not face prosecution under the Bribery Act.  Seems like a reasonable result.  In other words, no need for the third option in such a case.

On the other hand, if a corporate does not have adequate procedures (i.e. has no committment to anti-bribery compliance) and an act of bribery occurs within its organization, it presumably would face prosecution under the Bribery Act.  Seems like a reasonable result.  Does a third option really need to be created for corporates who do not implement adequate procedures?

Because the FCPA does not have an adequate procedures / compliance defense (at least not yet), the same analysis does not apply.

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In other recent U.K. developments, last week the SFO announced (here) that two former Innospec executives were charged.  Dennis Kerrison, the former CEO of Innospec Ltd., was charged with “an allegation of conspiracy to corrupt, in that he gave or agreed to give corrupt payments to public officials and other agents of the Government of Indonesia as inducements to secure, or as rewards for having secured, contracts from the Government of Indonesia.”  Paul Jennings, the former CEO of Innospec, is accused of “two allegations of conspiracy to corrupt, in that he gave or agreed to give corrupt payments to public officials and other agents of the Governments of Indonesia and Iraq as inducements to secure, or as rewards for having secured, contracts from those Governments.”

Earlier in the week, the SFO also announced (here) that David Turner, a former business unit director of Innospec Ltd., was charged with “alleged offenses of conspiring to make corrupt payments to public officials in Indonesia and Iraq to secure contracts for Innospec Ltd. for the supply of its products.”

Both Jennings (here for the prior post) and Turner (here for the prior post) previously settled SEC FCPA enforcement actions based on the same core set of conduct.

As with the SFO’s  recent case against Victor Dahdaleh (see here for the prior post), the recent Innospec related enforcement actions are not Bribery Act enforcement actions.

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Sure, it’s Halloween and all, but the FCPA reform debate (see here) is getting a little silly don’t you think?