Friday Roundup
Motion to dismiss filed, guilty plea, role reversal, adequate procedures, for the reading stack, and viewing suggestion. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Motion to Dismiss Filed
As highlighted in this prior post, in November 2017 the DOJ announced that Chi Ping Patrick Ho (of Hong Kong, China) and Cheikh Gadio (of Senegal) were criminally charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, violating the FCPA, conspiring to commit international money laundering, and committing international money laundering.
Earlier this week, Ho filed this motion to dismiss certain of the FCPA and money laundering charges.
DOJ Announces FCPA Enforcement Action Against Former Embraer Exec Colin Steven
In 2016, Embraer (a Brazil-based aircraft manufacturer with American Depositary Shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange) resolved a parallel DOJ / SEC Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action alleging improper conduct in the Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia, Mozambique, and India (See here for the prior post).
The net FCPA settlement amount was $187 million and in terms of Saudi Arabia it was alleged that “Embraer [largely through the conduct of Executive B] agreed to pay and did pay Saudi Arabia Official [described as “an official in a high-level decision-making position in a state-owned and controlled company in Saudi Arabia that performed a government function] more than $1.5 million to obtain a contract for the sale of three business jets, valued at approximately $93 million to Saudi Arabia Instrumentality.”
Yesterday, the DOJ returned to these allegations and announced an enforcement action against Executive B, also known as Colin Steven (a U.K. citizen residing in the United Arab Emirates).
FCPA Flash – A Conversation With Robert Luskin Regarding FCPA Enforcement Actions Against Foreign Companies
The FCPA Flash podcast provides in an audio format the same fresh, candid, and informed commentary about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and related topics as readers have come to expect from written posts on FCPA Professor.
This FCPA Flash episode is a conversation with Robert Luskin (Paul Hastings). Luskin has a wealth of experience representing foreign companies (including Technip, Total, Alstom and SBM Offshore) in FCPA enforcement actions. During the podcast, Luskin: (i) elaborates on his previous comments that foreign corporations in FCPA inquiries have real concerns about “whether U.S. lawyers are really defense lawyers or former prosecutors in a better suit” and how some FCPA practitioners are not willing to be adverse to the DOJ; (ii) discusses legal and policy issues present in FCPA enforcement actions against foreign companies; and (iii) opines whether the FCPA has been successful in achieving its objectives including whether any reform is desirable.
DOJ Announces FCPA Enforcement Action Against Two Former SBM Offshore Executives
If you are scoring at home, in the past 48 hours the DOJ has announced FCPA enforcement actions involving 7 individuals. (See here for the prior post regarding the FCPA enforcement action earlier this week against 5 individuals associated with Rolls-Royce).
By way of comparison, as highlighted in this post, in all of 2016 8 individuals were involved in DOJ FCPA enforcement actions and in 2015 8 individuals were also involved in DOJ FCPA enforcement actions.
In other words, those predicting a slow down in FCPA enforcement in the Trump administration were ignorant to begin with, but now really need to move on to other topics.
Relevant To The Motions To Dismiss Filed In SEC v. Cohen & Baros
Yesterday’s post went in-depth into the recent motions to dismiss filed in SEC v. Cohen & Baros (a rare instance in which the SEC is being put to its burden of proof in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action).
As highlighted in the post, the disputed legal issues largely center around statute of limitations and (as relevant to Baros a foreign national defendant) general personal jurisdiction issues as well as specific FCPA jurisdictional issues.
There are several previously decided cases cited in the parties’ briefs that are relevant to the issues in dispute and to get you up to speed on these issues, this post highlights those cases (all previously covered by FCPA Professor).