When the Foreign Extortion Prevent Action (FEPA) was enacted in late 2023 it was portrayed by some as filling a legal gap given that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act only captures the supply side of “bribery” and not the “demand side” (the “foreign officials” who receive or request bribes).
This portrayal ignored the fact that the Department of Justice has long used other criminal statutes (most often money laundering laws) to criminally charge “foreign officials” in connection with alleged bribery schemes.
Thus, was there really a meaningful “gap” that FEPA was actually filling? (As will be explored in a future post, FEPA was so poorly drafted that it has already been amended to correct several original drafting errors).
As explored in prior posts here and here, in the short time FEPA has been in existence, the DOJ continues to use other criminal statutes to criminally charge “foreign officials” in connection with alleged bribery schemes.
Another recent example further demonstrates this point.
As highlighted here, in connection with the FCPA enforcement action against various Smartmatic employees, the DOJ also criminally charged Juan Andres Donate Bautista (the former Chairman of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) of the Republic of the Philippines) with money laundering offenses in connection with the same underlying bribery scheme alleged in the FCPA enforcement action.
If you are scoring at home, in the approximate 9 months that FEPA has existed, the DOJ has criminally charged at least four “foreign officials” in connection with alleged foreign bribery schemes without needing FEPA.
