International waste management company Stericycle agreed to pay over $84 million to settle investigations by the U.S. and Brazil into Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations relating to bribes to Mexican, Argentinian and Brazilian officials, DOJ announced April 20. Stericycle entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement over a criminal case charging the company with two counts of conspiracy to violate the FCPA's anti-bribery provision and books and records provision.
Roger Ng, former managing director of The Goldman Sachs Group, was convicted by a federal jury in the Eastern District of New York for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a scheme with Malaysia's state-owned investment and development fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, DOJ announced. Ng was found guilty of conspiring to bribe a dozen foreign officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to obtain business for Goldman Sachs from 1MDB.
Charles Hunter Hobson, a former coal company executive, was arrested for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a scheme to bribe Egyptian government officials over contracts with an Egyptian state-owned company, Al Nasr for Coke and Chemicals, DOJ said. Hobson, of Knoxville, Tennessee, is also charged with laundering funds and receiving kickbacks. He faces one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA, two counts of violating the FCPA, one count of conspiracy to launder money, two counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Michelle Schulz, a former member of the President's Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration, rejoined the Braumiller Law Group as of counsel, the firm announced in an email. Schulz was one of the founders of the Braumiller Law Group, helping start the firm in 2003 when it was known as Braumiller Schulz. Schulz also served for a decade as a senior adviser to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's Industry Trade Advisory Committee for Aerospace. Her practice deals with export controls, including matters under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and Export Administration Regulations, along with Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. regulations, the firm said.
Daniel D'Andrea Golindano and Luis Javier Sanchez Rangel, two former senior Venezuelan prosecutors, were charged with money laundering for accepting over $1 million in bribes in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matter, DOJ said March 8. Each is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property. D'Andrea and Sanchez face up to 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit money laundering charge and up to 10 years in prison for each count of engaging in transactions in criminally derived property.
Daniel Pickard, previously an international trade partner at Wiley, joined Buchanan Ingersoll as the chair of its International Trade and National Security practice group, the firm announced. Pickard deals with matters concerning trade remedy investigations, including antidumping and countervailing duty and safeguard cases; U.S. economic sanctions; anti-bribery cases; export controls; the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and national security, the firm said. His national security practice deals with export controls and anti-boycott proceedings.
South Korea-based KT Corp. agreed to pay $6.3 million after it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Feb. 17. The telecommunications company, “engaged in multiple schemes” to make “improper payments” to government officials in South Korea and Vietnam, the SEC said, and didn’t have adequate internal accounting controls over charitable donations, third-party payments, executive bonuses and gift card purchases.
The Department of Justice this week released the 2021 year in review for its Fraud Section, detailing the agency's work on cases involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The review includes statistics on prosecuted FCPA cases, information on new officials who joined the FCPA Unit last year, and a list of “significant” corporate resolutions, individual indictments and guilty pleas.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced he is introducing a bill that would make U.S. companies liable for statements "that excuse the genocide in Xinjiang" or other statements that advance Chinese propaganda efforts, and would make it illegal to invest in core Chinese Communist Party activities. He says these actions would be subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, unless companies could explain that their actions were not made to gain or retain market access. Traditionally, the FCPA has been used to prosecute the offering of bribes by U.S. persons or firms in foreign countries.
The House’s America Competes Act of 2022 would revise and introduce a range of new export control and sanctions provisions, including new restrictions on exports of electronic waste-related goods, more designations targeting China for human rights abuses and a repeal of the sunset of the Magnitsky human rights sanctions regime. The bill, unveiled this week as the response to the Senate’s U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, would also require the Biden administration to conduct “periodic” reviews over its export controls for surveillance equipment, urges the administration to reexamine U.S. export policies for countries that supply weapons to terrorist organizations and calls for better harmonization of U.S. export control and sanctions policies with allies.