Supreme Court Denies Hearing on Applicability of FCPA to State-Owned Companies
An Appeals Court ruling that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act applies to state-owned companies will stand, after the Supreme Court on Oct. 6 declined to hear the case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had found in…
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U.S. v. Esquenazi and Rodriguez that payments by the co-owners of Terra Telecommunications, Joel Esquenazi and Carlos Rodriguez, to the Haitian government-owned Telecommunications D’Haiti (Teleco) qualified as a bribe paid to a foreign official, and upheld their 15 and seven year prison sentences, respectively (see 14052002). The Appeals Court explained in its May 2014 decision that an employee of the Haitian telecommunications company qualified under FCPA as a “foreign official” because Teleco was “an entity controlled by the government of a foreign country that performs a function the controlling government treats as its own.” Teleco isn’t a Haitian government agency, but was at the time almost completely owned by the central bank of Haiti. The Supreme Court offered no reason for denying certiorari.