It has not been a good month for Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS – the Mexican Social Security Institute) in U.S. appellate courts.
This recent post discussed a Sixth Circuit decision affirming the dismissal of a civil lawsuit on forum non conveniens grounds filed by IMSS against Stryker in the aftermath of the company’s FCPA enforcement action which involved, among other conduct, alleged bribery of IMSS officials.
As highlighted in this prior post, in 2017 Biomet became an FCPA repeat offender as the DOJ and SEC brought a parallel FCPA enforcement action in which the company agreed to an overall settlement amount of $30.4 million. A portion of the enforcement action involved conduct in Mexico and in the words of the DOJ: “Biomet’s subsidiaries used a customs broker whose five subagents bribed Mexican customs officials to allow Biomet to export mislabeled products to Mexico.” In the words of the SEC: “Biomet subsidiary 3i Mexico engaged Mexican Customs Broker and certain subagents to pay bribes to Mexican customs officials for the purpose of circumventing Mexican customs laws regarding importing unregistered and improperly labeled products into Mexico.”
