If your idea of a good time is cuddling up with an entire law journal volume devoted to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, then this post is for you.
Even if that is not your idea of a good time, if you are the least bit interested in the FCPA and its evolution, then you owe it to yourself to get your hands on the Fall 1982 edition of the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, a symposium volume titled “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Domestic and International Implications.”
This post previously highlighted the speech by Richard Shine (Chief, Multinational Fraud Branch, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice – the name given to the DOJ’s then de facto FCPA Unit) in the volume.
This recent post highlighted the speech by Frederick Wade (Chief Counsel, SEC Enforcement Division) in the volume.
The remainder of this post highlights notable aspects of other articles found in the Fall 1982 edition of the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce.
In “An Overview of the FCPA,” Wallace Timmeny (the former Deputy Director, SEC Division of Enforcement and at the time a lawyer in private practice) rightly identified the foreign policy concerns which motivated Congress to pass the FCPA:
“Concerns were expressed that our government was faced with foreign policy determinations and decisions made by American corporations. In other words, some of our corporations were affecting foreign policy and there was also the overriding concern that the whole idea of foreign payments or corruption in business was really putting an arrow in the bow of the countries that oppose our system.”
For more on this primary motivation of Congress in enacting the FCPA, and how the FCPA was thus not a purely altruistic act, see my article “The Story of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”
In “An Examination of the Accounting Provisions of the FCPA,” Lloyd Feller (the former Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Market Regulation and at the time a lawyer in private practice) nicely touched upon the FCPA’s books and records and internal controls provisions and how they created much controversy at the time.
“Let me try to put into context the controversy surrounding the accounting provisions. First, it is important to understand that the accounting provisions are part of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and apply to all issuers which register securities with the SEC. The provisions apply to all such issuers, whether or not they do business overseas. The Act, as it is applied through the accounting provisions, has absolutely nothing to do with foreign corrupt practices; it has to do with accounting, including the maintenance of books and records, and the establishment and maintenance of a system of internal accounting controls.”
“I think it is important to start with the understanding of how the Act was presented to the corporate community at the time it was passed, because the context in which the words were used and the purpose for which the accounting provisions were intended create the great controversy. It is important to understand that people who never heard of the bribery of foreign officials woke up one day and found that an Act had just been passed which applied to them in very significant ways. This was an Act which they had never heard of, had never thought involved them, had never paid any attention to, and had never understood. They listened to the lawyers and accountants explain it to them and still did not understand.”
In “The SEC Interpretative and Enforcement Program Under the FCPA,” John Sweeny (former Assistant General Counsel of the SEC and at the time a lawyer in private practice) rightly noted:
“The SEC did not actively support the bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Indeed, it’s not entirely clear that they have any interest in prohibiting bribery per se.”
Sweeny also nicely touched upon a prosecutorial common law issue that remains today.
“The corporate community cannot sit back and wait to see how the law develops. Because it makes sound business sense to comply with federal regulatory authorities without a public clamor, corporations must confirm their activity in ways which the agency requires. To do otherwise would mean that the corporations would be risking substantial litigation expenses and adverse publicity.”
In “International Aspects of the Control of Illicit Payments,” Professor Seymour Rubin assessed the then current state of the FCPA.
“The course of events in this particular area has been long, but it has not yielded much in the way of result. Whether the FCPA has yielded a great deal in the way of results, I leave to all of you who have considered the matter. Certainly it has yielded much in the way of instruction to people in various corporations. I am somewhat impressed by the amount of paper which has been produced on this subject. It reminds me again of the old saying to the effect that when the weight of the paper equals the weight of the airplane, the airplane will fly.”
Professor Rubin also rightly identified bribery and corruption as a trade issue and particularly how Senate Resolution 265 sponsored by Senator Ribicoff during the FCPA’s legislative debate was the most promising way to deal with the bribery and corruption problem. For more on Senate Resolution 265, see the Story of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (pgs. 982-984).
“[Senator Ribicoff’s proposal – Senate Resolution 265] was more realistic than some of the other proposals. In particular, Senator Ribicoff argued that bribes, as well as similar practices, represent distortions of proper trade practices. Under this premise, the members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade would be the appropriate group to consider the question of illicit payments and bribes that distort the fair competition desirable in the field of international trade. In other words, just as dumping and subsidization distort normal competition, so too does the practice of making illicit payments. This premise served as the basis upon which the issue was to be presented at the GATT conference. But when a special trade representative presented Senator Ribicoff’s proposal before the GATT conference, he was greeted with polite silence. The GATT, in 1979, concluded a multilateral trade negotiation. Among other things, this multilateral trade negotiation dealt with trade-distorting practices such as nontariff barriers, the question of government procurement, dumping codes, and the anti-subsidy or subsidies and countervailing duties. It would seem that the multilateral trade negotiation would have been a legitimate arena in which to discuss the subject, as being one more example of a trade distortion which ought to be regulated.”
“I think if one were to rexamine the idea presented in Senate Resolution 265 and adopt this in the area of trade, one would be addressing the problem of illicit payments in more meaningful and significant terms. When a large contract is lost by an American corporation because somebody else paid a bribe, a trade distortion results. Clearly, if one were really serious about achieving a meaningful agreement in the area of international control of illicit payments, the peg on which to hang it would be trade policy and not morality.”
In “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Implications for the Private Practitioner,” Robert Primoff (a lawyer in private practice) called the FCPA a “prosecutor’s paradise” and observed:
“The target is always guilty of the violation. The government has the option of deciding whether or not to prosecute. For practitioners, however, the situation is intolerable. We must be able to advise our clients as to whether their conduct violates the law, not whether this year’s crop of administrators is likely to enforce a particular alleged violation. That would produce, in effect, a government of men and women rather than a government of law.”
If the Fall 1982 edition of the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce does not completely fill your FCPA belly, you might also want to check out Volume 18, Number 2 of the Northwestern Journal of International Business (Winter 1998).
It is a symposium edition titled “A Review of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on Its Twentieth Anniversary: Its Application, Defense and International Aftermath.” The articles are rather pedestrian, but Stanley Sporkin’s (the former Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division during Congress’s consideration and deliberation of the FCPA) article “The Worldwide Banning of Schmiergeld: A Look at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act On Its Twenieth Birthday” is worth a read as he provides a first-person account of the origins of the FCPA. [In case you are wondering Schmiergeld is the German word for bribe].
See here for a prior post detailing articles in a 2012 symposium edition of the Ohio State Law Journal “The FCPA At Thirty-Five and Its Impact on Global Business.”
