Tagged: FCPA

17 Jan, 2025

DOJ’s Balancing Act — Incentives to Cooperate and Deterrence (Part III of III)

While DOJ did not have an overwhelming FCPA enforcement year, DOJ has devoted significant energy to tweaking its enforcement and compliance policies. These measures were believed to coincide with a number of significant prosecutions — but alas, they really did not materialize. The modifications and tweaks to DOJ’s Corporate Enforcement Policy, however, were significant. DOJ’s primary focus has been on accountability and prosecution of individuals...

General

15 Jan, 2025

FCPA 2024 Enforcement — Bribery Schemes and Compliance Reminders (Part II of III)

Criminals can be creative — that is a true statement but essentially FCPA criminals have to embrace a variety of well-established techniques to accomplish a straight-forward goal — steal money from the company to funnel bribery payments to foreign officials. The complement of 2024 FCPA cases saw some of our standard techniques (or schemes) but a few presented some new twists. To help organize these...

General

8 Jan, 2025

AAR’s Bribery Schemes: Bribery in the Aviation Industry (Part II of II)

AAR, a provider of aviation products and services, engaged in two separate bribery schemes. State-owned entities and government agencies permeate the aviation industry. As a result, FCPA risks are embedded in direct industry activity and related services and suppliers. The AAR case is a perfect example of just how easy it is to engage in bribery in the aviation industry. AAR engaged in two separate...

Podcasts

6 Jan, 2025

Episode 350 — Deep Dive into McKinsey FCPA Settlement

What went wrong when McKinsey paid bribes to secure consulting contracts with South Africa’s state-owned enterprises? In this episode, Michael Volkov dives into the December 2024 DOJ settlement with McKinsey & Company, which paid $122 million after being found guilty of paying bribes to officials at Transnet and Eskom to secure valuable consulting contracts. The case involved significant violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...

General

20 Dec, 2024

DOJ Indicts Indian Billionaire and Seven Other Individuals for Bribery and Fraud Scheme Involving Payments to Indian Government Officials to Obtain Solar Energy Contracts

In a far-reaching criminal case, in November 2024, the Justice Department unsealed a complex, five-count indictment in the Eastern District of New York charging eight defendants, including Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, executives of the Adani Group, a large Indian renewable-energy company, with conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar...

General

19 Dec, 2024

Lessons Learned from McKinsey’s FCPA Enforcement Action — Local Partners and Third Parties (Part III of III)

Deja Vu all over again — Yogi Berra Yogi Berra said it best — we have seen this scenario before, with similar parties — corrupt foreign officials from Eskom (and Transnet), local partner requirements resulting in engagement of unqualified businesses, and corrupt third parties who assist the bribery scheme in exchange for a cut of the action. This is a familiar set of facts, and...

General

18 Dec, 2024

McKinsey Company’s Bribery Scheme — A Familiar Pattern in South Africa (Part II of III)

The McKinsey FCPA case follows several other significant cases involving South Africa. ABB and SAP resolved FCPA cases involving bribes in South Africa; on the SEC front, Gartner resolved a bribery case involving South Africa. Like these other cases, McKinsey’s bribery scheme focused on two important state-owned enterprises: Transnet Ltd, the South African company responsible for operation of ports, rails and pipelines; and Eskom Ltd.,...

General

12 Dec, 2024

BIT Mining FCPA Settlement and Lessons Learned (Part III of III)

Bit Mining, formerly 500.com, was a doomed company from the beginning, When a CEO orchestrates a bribery scheme with the assistance of other senior executives, shareholders and the public have little chance of ensuring a business operating with ethics and integrity. 500.com’s future was sealed when it embraced bribery as a means to avoid head-to-head competition against established US and European companies seeking to enter...

General

11 Dec, 2024

BIT Mining Bribery Scheme — CEO Directed Payments and the Cover-Up (Part II of III)

In reviewing FCPA bribery fact patterns, it is a rare occasion when a company’s CEO is at the epicenter of the criminal conspiracy. In the BIT Mining case, standing atop all of the actors is the CEO Zhengming Pan, Bit Mining’s former CEO and a Chinese national. DOJ had no choice but to charge Pan with a criminal FCPA conspiracy. Others could have been charged...

Podcasts

8 Dec, 2024

Episode 348 — Deep Dive into Telefónica DOJ Settlement for FCPA Violations

Telefónica Venezolana C.A. (“Telefónica Venezolana”), the Venezuela-based subsidiary of Telefónica S.A. (Telefónica), the Spanish telecommunications company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (“DPA”) and agreed to pay over $85.2 million to resolve DOJ FCPA charges stemming from bribery payments to Venezuelan government officials to secure preferential access to U.S. dollars in a currency auction. Telefónica Venezolana entered into a three-year DPA and the filing of a...