In its continuing aggressive FCPA criminal enforcement program, DOJ announced the indictment of two former Alstom executives and a former Marubeni executive with FCPA violations arising from a bribery scheme in Indonesia.  A copy of the indictment is here.

The three former executives included:

• Reza Moenaf, the former president of Alstom’s Indonesia subsidiary;

• Eko Sulianto, the former director of sales of Alstom’s Indonesia subsidiary; and

• Junji Kusunoki, the former deputy manager of Marubeni’s overseas power project department.

The three defendants were charged with FCPA conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy;  Kusunoki was charged with six counts of substantive FCPA violations and four charges of money laundering violations.  Sulianto and Moenaf were each charged with two counts of violating the FCPA and one count of violating money laundering.

Moenaf, Sulianto and Kusunoki were charged as part of a long-standing investigation of Alstom and Marubeni’s conduct in Indonesia.  Five other individuals have plead guilty in the case, and Lawrence Hoskins, a former senior vice president at Alstom, was convicted following a jury trial of 11 counts of conspiracy, FCPA violations and money laundering.

In December 2014, Alstom plead guilty to FCPA offenses and paid total fines of $772 million. 

In March 2014, Marubeni plead guilty to FCPA offenses and paid total fines of $88 million.

The defendants, along with other co-conspirators, paid bribes to Indonesia officials, including a high-ranking member of the Indonesian Parliament and the president of Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), the state-owned electricity company in Indonesia, in exchange for securing a $118 million contract (“Tarahan Project”).  The defendants used two “consultants” purportedly to provide legitimate services in connection with the Tarahan Project, but in fact the consultants were used to funnel bribes to the government officials.

The first consultant received hundreds of thousands of dollars in his Maryland bank account to be used to bribe the Parliament number.  The consultant transferred the bribe money to a bank account in Indonesia for the Parliament member.

The indictment focuses on a scheme that was executed in the fall of 2003, when the defendants and co-conspirators determined that the first consultant’s payments were not effectively influencing key officials at PLN. 

As noted in one email between Moenaf, Sulianto and their co-conspirators described PLN officials’ “concern that if we have won the job, whether their rewards will still be satisfactory or this agent only gave them pocket money and disappear.”

In another email, Moenaf asserted that the consultant “has no grip on the PLN Tender team at all” and “is more or less similar to [a] cashier which I feel we pay too much.”

As a result of these concerns, the defendants and co-conspirators were successful in securing the Tarahan project and subsequently made payments to the consultants for the alleged purpose of bring the Indonesian officials.