President Donald Trump on Feb. 10 instructed the attorney general to cease from opening any new investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for 180 days so that the Office of the Attorney General can issue new guidelines for FCPA enforcement that "prioritize American interests" and U.S. "economic competitiveness." In the order, Trump said the FCPA has been "abused" and "impedes the United States' foreign policy objectives."
President Donald Trump is poised to roll back enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act until Attorney General Pam Bondi can issue new enforcement guidelines, Bloomberg reported Feb. 10. Trump is expected to sign an executive order halting FCPA enforcement until all current and past actions are reviewed and the guidelines are issued. A fact sheet being drafted by the administration says "U.S. companies are harmed by FCPA overenforcement because they are prohibited from engaging in practices common among international competitors, creating an uneven playing field," according to the report.
DOJ entered into a deal to send around $52.88 million in forfeited assets to Nigeria "in recognition of Nigeria's assistance" in an investigation into corruption in the Nigerian oil industry, DOJ announced.
McKinsey and Co. Africa, a subsidiary of consulting giant McKinsey, will pay over $122 million to settle an investigation that found the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to South African government officials from 2012 to 2016, DOJ announced. A former McKinsey senior partner, Vikas Sagar, pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme.
DOJ reached a settlement in a civil forfeiture case against a Los Angeles mansion belonging to a former Armenian government official's family. The mansion will be forfeited to the U.S., which will then sell the property, retaining 85% of the proceeds. The remaining funds will be sent to the sons of the former official, Gagik Khachatryan, and a corporation that the sons own. The forfeiture is part of the resolution of a foreign corruption scheme prosecuted by DOJ.
Mexican national Abraham Cigarroa Cervantes, former finance director of waste management firm Stericycle's Latin American wing, was charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for helping bribe officials in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, DOJ announced March 19.
DOJ likely will continue expanding its cooperation with foreign governments in investigating and prosecuting Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, Miller & Chevalier lawyer John Davis said in an interview. After a year that saw DOJ cooperate with South Africa and Colombia for the first time, Davis said, the agency will seek to work with more Latin American and European nations on FCPA enforcement.
The recently enacted Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) will close a long-standing gap in anti-corruption enforcement by enabling the U.S. government to prosecute non-U.S. government officials who solicit or receive bribes, Dechert said in a Jan. 22 legal update.
The U.S. brought enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against 13 companies in 2023, resulting in $776 million in penalties, a drop from the $1.5 billion in penalties announced in 2022 but up from $282 million in penalties from 2021, a Jan. 2 FCPA Blog post said. While the 2023 penalty total value was lower than in 2022, there were more companies penalized than in either 2022 or 2021, which saw eight and four companies, respectively, penalized. The blog said the average resolution amount announced by DOJ and the SEC was $59.6 million, with total financial settlements the lowest since 2021 and the second lowest since 2015.
Consumer goods conglomerate 3M agreed to pay over $6.5 million to settle charges it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's internal controls provisions, the SEC announced Aug. 25. 3M's China-based subsidiary allegedly arranged for Chinese government employees of state-owned healthcare facilities to travel to international conferences, educational events and healthcare facility visits as part of the subsidiary's "marketing and outreach efforts."