Across the pond, sentenced, unremarkable, and nonsense. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Across the Pond
As highlighted in this prior post, in July 2016 the U.K. Serious Fraud Office announced:
“The SFO is conducting a criminal investigation into the activities of Unaoil, its officers, its employees and its agents in connection with suspected offences of bribery, corruption and money laundering.”
As highlighted here, in last week’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action against Lawrence Parker in connection with a telecommunications bribery scheme in Aruba the DOJ alleged that Servicio di Telecommunicacion di Aruba N.V. (SETAR) was an instrumentality of the Aruban government such that Egbert Yvan Ferdinand Koolman (a product manager at SETAR) was a “foreign official.”
That’s interesting because since 2003 SETAR has described itself as a “private sector business.”
This recent post highlighted the DOJ’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action against Lawrence Parker in connection with a telecommunications bribery scheme in Aruba in which the DOJ alleged that Servicio di Telecommunicacion di Aruba N.V. (SETAR) was an instrumentality of the Aruban government such that Egbert Yvan Ferdinand Koolman (a product manager at SETAR and alleged bribe recepient) was a “foreign official.”
This post highlights that the likely origin of the FCPA enforcement action against Parker was this March 2017 civil complaint filed in U.S. court by SETAR against Koolman, Parker and several other entities and individuals and how the civil complaint originated with the so-called Panama Papers.
It’s not every day that the DOJ announces a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement casually in a press release about another enforcement action, but that is what the DOJ did today in this release announcing that Egbert Yvan Ferdinand Koolman (a Dutch citizen residing in Miami, Florida who was an official of Servicio di Telecommunicacion di Aruba N.V. (Setar), an instrumentality of the Aruban government) pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering involving FCPA violations.
The release further states: “in connection with the scheme, Lawrence W. Parker, Jr., 42, of Miami, pleaded guilty on Dec. 28, 2017 to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and to commit wire fraud. Parker’s sentencing is scheduled for April 30.”
This post summarizes the original source documents in the Parker enforcement action.
