Lanny Breuer stepped down as Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on March 1st after nearly four years on the job. Word of Breuer’s departure began circulating soon after the airing of a PBS Frontline program that examined the general lack of prosecutions of Wall Street executives in the aftermath of the so-called financial crisis. While much of the public scrutiny of Breuer and his Criminal Division focused on the financial services industry, the substantive law of most interest to Breuer appeared to be the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This article examines FCPA enforcement and related issues during Breuer’s tenure, demonstrates that his tenure was not as glowing as DOJ suggests, and shows that FCPA enforcement under Breuer raised significant public policy issues that need to be addressed by his successor.
So begins my article “Lanny Breuer and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement” recently published by Bloomberg BNA’s White Collar Crime Report. (The article can be downloaded here).
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Interested in analyzing Breuer’s public FCPA statements and assessing the performance of his Criminal Division against such statements? Breuer’s FCPA speeches can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
