Earlier this week, the DOJ announced that two additional individual defendants have been added to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (and related) enforcement action against individuals associated with broker dealer Direct Access Partners. (See here for the original May 2013 enforcement action against Jose Hurtado and Tomas Clarke and here for an additional individual, Ernesto Lujan, being added to the enforcement action in June 2013).
Like in the previous enforcement actions, the additional defendants (Benito Chinea and Joseph DeMeneses, the Chief Executive Officer and a managing partner, respectively of Direct Access Partners) were criminally charged in connection with alleged improper payments to Maria Gonzalez (V.P. of Finance / Executive Manager of Finance and Funds Administration at Bandes, an alleged Venezuelan state-owned banking entity that acted as the financial agent of the state to finance economic development projects).
As noted in the DOJ’s release, Chinea and DeMeneses were each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and the Travel Act, five counts of violating the FCPA, and five counts of violating of the Travel Act. Chinea and DeMeneses were also charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of money laundering. DeMeneses was further charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. (See here for the SEC’s announcement of a related enforcement action against Chinea and DeMeneses. Like the SEC’s prior enforcement actions against the other individuals, Chinea and DeMeneses are charged with various securities law violations, but not FCPA offenses as the individuals – while associated with a broker dealer – are not associated with an issuer).
As noted in the DOJ’s release, in August 2013 Lujan, Hurtado and Clarke each pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the FCPA, to violate the Travel Act and to commit money laundering, as well as substantive counts of these offenses.
The DOJ’s enforcement action against Chinea and DeMeneses is further to the curious clustering phenomenon clearly observable in FCPA enforcement.
As highlighted in this previous post (with statistics calculated through the end of 2013), 53% of the individuals charged by the DOJ with FCPA criminal offenses since 2008 have been in just four cases and 75% of the individuals charged by the DOJ since 2008 have been in just nine cases.
Of further note (and again with statistics calculated through the end of 2013), of the 89 individuals charged by the DOJ with FCPA criminal offenses since 2008, 61 of the individuals (69%) were employees or otherwise affiliated with private business entities (for instance – Haiti Teleco related enforcement actions, Control Components Inc. Latin Node, Nexus Technologies, BizJet, not to mention failed prosecutions against various Africa Sting defendants and individuals associated with Lindsey Manufacturing).
This is a striking statistic given that 48 of the 60 corporate DOJ FCPA enforcement actions since 2008 (80%) (again using statistics calculated through the end of 2013) were against publicly traded corporations. In short, a private entity DOJ FCPA enforcement is approximately three times more likely to have a related DOJ FCPA criminal prosecution of an individual than a public entity DOJ FCPA enforcement action.
Thus far in 2014, the trends have been further magnified. In addition to this week’s action:
- 5 individuals associated with private company Group DF were charged with FCPA offenses (see here); and
- 3 individuals associated with private company PetroTiger Ltd. were charged with FCPA offenses (see here)
