As highlighted in prior posts here and here, in April 2016 Las Vegas Sands (LVS) paid $9 million to resolve an SEC Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action finding violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions concerning various conduct in China.
As highlighted here, in January 2017 the DOJ brought a related action in which LVS paid $7 million pursuant to a non-prosecution agreement. As highlighted in the prior post, it was an usual development because FCPA enforcement actions against issuers involving a DOJ and SEC component are nearly always resolved on the same day. Adding to the intrigue, the enforcement action was brought during the final hours of the Obama administration while LVS CEO Sheldon Adelson (a major Republican contributor) was in Washington D.C. for President Trump’s inauguration.
Recently, the High Court of Singapore (pictured) issued this decision in the context of an arbitration dispute. As highlighted below, the High Court of Singapore dives deep into the LVS enforcement action and concludes, from an evidentiary standpoint, that the FCPA findings have a low degree of reliability and were agreed to by LVS against the backdrop of incentives that diminishes their overall weight. In other words, the High Court of Singapore caught on to the “facade of FCPA enforcement” (see here for the article).
The Singapore decision is also interesting because it involved, as dueling experts, Peter Clark (former DOJ FCPA Unit) and Philip Urofosky (former Assistant Chief of the DOJ Fraud section who worked extensively on FCPA matters).
