Friday Roundup
Elevate, further to the clustering phenomenon, transparency, dismissed, and incomplete. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Elevate
Learning a new topic or elevating your knowledge and practical skills in a topic is not just for formal students in formal educational settings. Professionals in the workplace can also benefit from back to “school” experiences.
For professionals in the FCPA space – or wishing to join the FCPA space – the FCPA Institute serves this objective and has “graduated” approximately 200 hundred diverse professionals since its launch in 2014.
The next FCPA Institute will take place in Nashville on May 3-4th. See here to learn more and to register.
Friday Roundup
A home run, quotable, monitors, up north, scrutiny alerts and updates, irksome, and for the reading stack. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Home Run
The latest issue of the always informative FCPA Update from Debevoise & Plimpton (released by the way on the opening day of the Major League Baseball season) hits a home run.
The lead article by Paul Berger (former Associate Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division) concerns the recent Elbit Imaging enforcement action (see here for the prior post) and states in pertinent part:
Maxwell Technologies Becomes A Repeat Offender Of The FCPA’s Books And Records And Internal Controls Provisions
As highlighted in this previous post, in 2011 Maxwell Technologies (a California-based manufacturer of energy storage and power delivery products) resolved parallel DOJ and SEC Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions concerning alleged business conduct in China by agreeing to pay approximately $14 million.
As noted in the previous post, the SEC’s charges included disclosure violations not often seen in FCPA enforcement actions, based on allegations that Maxwell’s bribe payments allowed the company to offset losses and fund product expansions that are now a source of revenue for the company. Specifically the SEC alleged: ““Maxwell greatly depended on the revenue from Maxwell SA’s high-voltage capacitor sales to China in order to help fund Maxwell’s expansion into new product lines that are now expected to become Maxwell’s future source of revenue. Maxwell engaged in the bribery scheme because it enabled the company to obtain material revenue needed to financially position itself to help fund the very products that today are sustaining Maxwell’s future growth.”
Friday Roundup
Scrutiny alerts and updates, just plain silly, #precisionmatters, and for the reading stack. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Scrutiny Alerts and Updates
Societe Generale
As highlighted in this 2014 post, Societe Generale, among other companies, has been under FCPA scrutiny regarding its dealings with Libya’s government-run investment fund. The French financial services company recently disclosed:
Yet Another Civil Action Concerning Bribery And Corruption
In this post discussing a recent civil action filed by Harvest Natural Resources Inc. against various former high-ranking officials at Venezuela’s national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (“PDVSA”) and others, Tom Fox (who calls himself the Compliance Evangelist) asserts “bribery and corruption are rarely used as the basis of civil actions between entities and individuals.”
Not true. Bribery and corruption allegations are frequently used as the basis for civil litigation and it would be nice if commentators engaged in a bit of research before hitting the publish button and polluting the internet with false and misleading information.