Tag: Wall Street Journal

Corruption Currents: The Wall Street Journal’s New Corruption Blog

“Corruption Currents, the Wall Street Journal’s corruption blog, will dig into the ever-present and ever-changing world of corporate corruption. It will be a source of news, analysis and commentary for those who earn a living by finding corruption or by avoiding it.”

Apparently corruption has become such a big topic that the Wall Street Journal has launched a new blog focused on the topic. It went live on September 20, but has a dozen plus stories dating back to last week.

The blog is staffed by two reporters from Dow-Jones. Joseph Palazzolo, formerly from Main Justice and Samuel Rubenfeld, who has been reporting for Dow Jones for about a year.

Corruption Currents will focus primarily on bribery, money laundering, sanctions, and terrorism finance.

They are already producing some good stories and aggregating other stories into their “High Tide” feature. You can find it at http://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/

FCPA and the Wall Street Journal

Not since the Siemens FCPA case have I seen the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act show up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.  That case was highlighted because of billion dollar fine.

The big part of today’s story was the number of active FCPA cases. According to the story there are at least 120 active cases: U.S. Cracks Down on Corporate Bribes. There are two big names on the list of companies currently under Justice Department review: Sun Microsystems Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. the Sun disclosure probably came from the diligence in connection with its acquisition by Oracle.

Dionne Searcy, author of the article, believes the renewed emphasis on enforcing the FCPA “began in the wake of a series of business scandals earlier this decade, including the collapse of Enron, that stirred up a new corporate-reform movement.”

When the FCPA was first passed there was concern that it would limit the competitive of the United States. If Non-U.S. companies were paying bribes to win contracts, then U.S. firms would lose the business unless they broke the law. The online comments to the article bring up those same thoughts.

References: