Stay Ahead Of The Curve
One reason to read FCPA Professor is to stay ahead of the curve and to learn about issues others will be focused on in the weeks and months ahead.
For instance, this January 19th post highlighted a disclosure by Calavo Growers, Inc. “a global leader in quality produce, including avocados, tomatoes and papayas, and a pioneer of healthy fresh-cut fruit, vegetables and prepared foods.”
Although the disclosure did not mention the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the post surmised that the disclosure was likely FCPA related given that a recent FCPA enforcement action concerned a guacamole manufacturing plant in Mexico. The post mentioned that, in certain instances, when one company resolves an FCPA enforcement action based on a certain issue in a specific country, it then leads to scrutiny of other companies in the same industry operating in the same country.
Stanley Black & Decker Discloses “Certain Transactions … That May Raise Compliance Questions Under The FCPA”
Company SEC filings are drafted, reviewed, and finalized by many sets of professional eyes.
Words matter in SEC filings and are assumed to be taken literally.
Thus, if a company discloses that it has identified certain transactions that “may raise compliance questions” under a certain law, it is assumed that the company is not yet in a position to determine whether those transaction do in fact violate the law, just that those transactions “may raise compliance questions” under the FCPA.
Why a company would voluntarily contact the U.S. government about this is an interesting question. (See this prior post from 2009).
Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (a manufacturer of industrial tools and household hardware and provider of security products) recently disclosed:
The Latest Reminder That The FCPA Has Always Been A Law Much Broader Than Its Name Suggests
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has always been a law much broader than its name suggests. Sure, the FCPA contains anti-bribery provisions which concern foreign bribery. Sure, the FCPA’s books and records and internal controls provisions can be implicated in foreign bribery schemes.
However, the fact remains that most FCPA enforcement actions (that is enforcement actions that charge or find violations of the FCPA’s books and records and internal controls provisions) have nothing to do with foreign bribery and these provisions are among the most generic legal provisions one can possibly find.
The latest example to demonstrate this point is yesterday’s announcement by the SEC that Healthcare Services Group, Inc. has agreed to pay $6 million to settle charges that the company engaged in accounting and disclosure violations that enabled the company to report inflated quarterly earnings per share (EPS) that met research analysts’ consensus estimates for multiple quarters.