This type of post has been published several times before (see here and here among other posts), and once again today, to highlight an important (yet often overlooked) aspect of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: the FCPA 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. For lack of a better term, let’s call these numerous enforcement actions non-FCPA, FCPA enforcement actions.
The latest example is this recent SEC enforcement action against Rollins Inc. (an Atlanta based company that provides termite and other pest control services to residential and commercial customers including through such brands as Orkin) and Paul Northern (the company’s for CFO) for engaging “in improper accounting practices in order to boost its publicly-reported quarterly earnings per share (EPS) to meet research analysts’ consensus estimates.”
