Former Corsa Coal VP And Head Of International Sales Pleads Guilty To Egypt Bribery Scheme
Corsa Coal Corp. is a publicly traded Pennsylvania-based coal mining company focused on the production and sales of metallurgical coal, an essential ingredient in the production of steel. It’s core business is producing and selling metallurgical coal to domestic and international steel and coke producers.
Between 2016 and 2020, Frederick Cushmore Jr. (pictured) was employed by Corsa in various international sales positions including Vice-President, Head of International Sales. (See here for Corsa’s 2018 press release announcing Cushmore’s promotion. In the release, Corsa’s CEO stated: “We are thrilled to … provide Fred with a well-deserved promotion.”
Recently, Cushmore was criminally charged and plead guilty to a conspiracy charge to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions in connection with a bribery scheme in Egypt.
Laughing Out Loud At Certain Portions Of SEC Chair Gensler’s Speech
Yesterday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler delivered this speech.
I literally laughed out loud as to certain portions of Gensler’s speech.
I didn’t laugh because what Gensler said was unreasonable. To the contrary, much of what he said represents sound policy. Rather, I laughed because I have closely followed SEC enforcement practices (and speeches from enforcement agency officials) for over a decade.
Gensler began his speech as follows:
Deputy AG Monaco On Individual Accountability, Prior Misconduct, Monitors, And NPAs and DPAs (With Commentary)
Last week, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco delivered this speech as part of the ABA’s National Institute on White Collar Crime.
While the speech is generating a significant amount of attention, substantively the speech was largely a yawner and the policy changes articulated are marginal at best and elevate form over substance.
As has been highlighted several times on these pages, FCPA (and related) enforcement has long suffered from the following problem (nicely articulated by a practitioner in 1982):
The Current Time Gap In SEC Individual FCPA Enforcement Is The Longest In Eight Years
One reason to take FCPA enforcement agency rhetoric with a grain of salt is because it is warranted.
For instance, the FCPA enforcement agencies often talk about the importance of x and how they are committed to x, but in reality rarely do x.
Case in point is SEC individual FCPA enforcement actions.
For many years, SEC enforcement officials have talked about the importance of individual FCPA enforcement actions and set forth below are representative quotes from over the years.
In Connection With 2019 Ericsson Enforcement Action, DOJ Criminally Charges Former Ericsson Employee
As highlighted in this prior post, in late 2019 Swedish telecom company Ericsson (a company with American Depositary Shares traded in the U.S.) resolved a $1.06 billion net FCPA enforcement action concerning conduct in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Kuwait, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia.
Regarding Djibouti, the enforcement action alleged that Ericsson (through certain subsidiaries and agents) provided approximately $2,100,000 in bribe payments to, and for the benefit of, foreign officials in Djibouti, including a high-ranking government official in the executive branch of the Djibouti government who had influence over decisions made by a state-owned telecommunications company and the CEO of the state-owned telecom company, in order to secure an improper advantage in order to obtain and retain business with the Telecom Company and to win a contract valued at approximately €20,300,000 with the Telecom Company.”
In connection with this prong of the Ericsson enforcement action, the DOJ announced yesterday that Afework “Affe” Bereket (pictured – a dual citizen of Ethiopia and Sweden) was criminally charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering “for his alleged role in a scheme to pay approximately $2.1 million in bribes to high-level government officials in the Republic of Djibouti and conspiring to launder funds to promote the scheme.”