An Interesting Resolution To An Individual FCPA Matter
In 2011, the DOJ announced that Maxwell Technologies (a California-based manufacturer of energy-storage and power-delivery products) “agreed to pay an $8 million criminal penalty to resolve charges related to the FCPA for bribing Chinese government officials to secure sales of Maxwell’s products to state-owned manufacturers of electric-utility infrastructure in several Chinese provinces.”
In 2013, in connection with the same core conduct, the DOJ criminally charged Alain Riedo (a Swiss citizen and former executive of a Maxwell subsidiary in Switzerland) with nine criminal offenses: conspiracy to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery, books and records, and internal controls provisions, two substantive violations of the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions, five substantive violations of the FCPA’s books and records provisions; and one substantive violation of the FCPA’s internal controls provisions.
According to the court docket, nothing meaningful happened in the case for over a decade.
When The SEC Is Put To Its Ultimate Burden Of Proof
As has been highlighted more than once on this website, the FCPA Blog is a frequent source of FCPA misinformation and rubbish.
In this recent post, the FCPA Blog asserts that most individual FCPA defendants are convicted and that only a “tiny percentage of individual FCPA defendants – win acquittals.”
Acquittal of course is a technical legal term, but the suggestion that only a “tiny percentage of individual FCPA defendants” prevail over the government when the government is put to its ultimate burden of proof is misinformation and rubbish.
A future post will highlight numerous instances in which individual FCPA defendants have prevailed over the DOJ in criminal matters, but this post first focuses on individuals prevailing over the SEC in civil matters.