An anonymous online survey by TRACE International found that, of those business people visiting China who were asked for more than one bribe, almost 20 percent reported that they had been solicited more than 100 times. TRACE set up an online bribe-reporting system that allows people to file reports in different languages about bribe demands. … Read more »
Category: Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Right to Audit
From the KPMG 2008 Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Survey: While 63 percent of those respondents that require periodic compliance certifications said they incorporate a right-to-audit clause in their third-party contracts, a significant majority of these (68 percent) has never exercised the right (see Chart 4). A right-to-audit clause appears to be the kind of oversight expected by … Read more »
KPMG 2008 Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Survey
KPMG Forensic published its 2008 Anti-bribery and Anti-corruption Survey. KPMG surveyed 103 U.S. executives in the summer of 2008. At a time when bribery and corruption prosecutions and enforcement actions are on the rise across the globe, the results of a new KPMG LLP survey suggest that multinational organizations based in the United States continue … Read more »
Defining “Foreign Official” Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Jeffrey Clark of Willkie Farr & Gallagher moderated a conference on Defining “Foreign Official” Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. David Stewart, U.S. Department of State and Georgetown University Law Center and Kathleen Hamann, U.S. Department of Justice led the discussion. They start with a quote: why is a raven like a writing desk? (From … Read more »
Securities Litigation and the FCPA
last week the Ninth Circuit handed down a decision in a securities litigation case related to FCPA violations in Glazer Capital Management LP v. Magistri. Glazer’s claims arose after InVision Technologies, Inc. (InVision) announced, in March 2004, that it had entered into a merger agreement with General Electric (GE). Several months later, in July 2004, … Read more »
Kozeny Decision Limits Defense to FCPA
Melissa Klein Aguilar wrote a peice on Compliance Week about the decision in U.S. v. Kozeny decision that limits the local law defense under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: FCPA Decision Narrows Local-Law Defense. The Kozeny decision makes clear that if the payment itself is illegal, the local-law defense can’t be used even if the … Read more »
Bribery and Corruption Have Become Endemic in Russia
The Economist ran a special report on Russia. The article that caught my eye was Grease My Palm. In looking at the scope of the problem in Russia, the articel cites the corruption market being estimated at $300 billion, which is about 20% of Russia’s GDP. INDEM (a Russian NGO) says 80% of all Russian … Read more »
Iraq Is Quietly Firing Fraud Monitors
From James Glanz and Riyadh Mohammed of the New York Times: Premier of Iraq Is Quietly Firing Fraud Monitors. The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that … Read more »
Bribery’s Broken Windows
Alexandra Wrage of TRACE international wrote Bribery’s Broken Windows (.pdf) for the Q1 edition of Ethisphere. She tackles the credibility issue with allowing facilitating payments to low level officials, but saying “no” to senior ranking official. She advocates that the companies should prohibit payments at all levels. She looks to the New York subway system’s … Read more »
Larger Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Fines Ahead
Lynn Marek of the National Law Journal reports: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission expects in the next two to six months to slap larger penalties than in the past on a number of companies that have allegedly violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, reminding lawyers in the field that the regulator is taking a … Read more »