Christopher Monahan has joined Faegre Drinker as a partner in its Washington, D.C.-based customs and international trade practice, the firm announced. Monahan, formerly of Winston & Strawn, has advised clients on U.S. international trade and investment regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the Export Administration Regulations and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the firm said.
The new Department of Justice enforcement and disclosure policies (see 2110280051) could substantially increase scrutiny on corporate trade violators, law firms said, especially those with a history of misconduct. The policies, announced last week by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, revealed the Biden administration’s “extensive agenda that is designed to be tough” on corporations, Wiley Rein said, and may foreshadow more changes. “As she made clear,” the firm said Oct. 29, “the Biden DOJ is serious about revamping corporate enforcement and this is just the first wave of reform.”
The Department of Justice this week announced new initiatives to “strengthen” its enforcement of corporate crime, which could have wide-ranging effects on cases involving export controls, sanctions and foreign bribery violations. The initiatives were presented by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco as “changes” to the agency’s enforcement policies, including how DOJ will calculate mitigation when assessing penalties, how it will weigh past misconduct for unrelated violations and how it will use independent monitors to ensure compliance with settlement agreements.
Multinational conglomerate Honeywell Inc. expects to pay upwards of $160 million to settle investigations by the Department of Justice and Brazilian law enforcement over alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in its quarterly report filed on Oct. 22 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it continues to cooperate with DOJ and the SEC throughout the investigations, including regarding a potential resolution of the allegations. Honeywell said that it recorded a $160 million charge in its Consolidated Statement of Operations, also accruing a liability on its Consolidated Balance Sheet to account for the expected payout.
Credit Suisse Group AG, a Switzerland-based financial services company, was fined nearly $100 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the SEC said this week. The commission said Credit Suisse bribed Mozambique government officials and hid the “underlying corruption” by saying the payments were intended to help Mozambique's tuna fishing industry. The company also had “deficient internal accounting controls,” which failed to address FCPA requirements and “address significant and known risks concerning bribery.” Credit Suisse faces about $475 million in total fines, from U.S. and United Kingdom authorities, including the SEC fine, for a range of other financial violations, including operating a hidden debt scheme and paying kickbacks to now-indicted former Credit Suisse investment bankers and their intermediaries.
Daniel Kahn, acting deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, is rejoining Davis Polk's Washington, D.C., office as a partner in the White Collar Defense & Investigations practice, the firm announced. Kahn will work on issues relating to criminal and regulatory investigations, along with civil and criminal trials. At DOJ, Kahn most recently supervised the Fraud Section and Appellate Section. Before that, Kahn was acting chief of the Fraud Section and chief of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit, where he oversaw involved FCPA and sanctions violations, commodities and securities fraud and money laundering, among other things, Davis Polk said.
Joe Walker, former head of Squire Patton's white collar practice, joined the white collar team at Orrick as a partner, the firm announced. Walker has expertise on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters and cases before the Securities and Exchange Commission, Orrick said. Walker also served as a prosecutor in the Department of Justice Criminal Division, Fraud Section, where he led the first joint FCPA enforcement action between the SEC and DOJ. He has represented “major financial institutions in enforcement matters” and was “a DOJ- and SEC-appointed FCPA compliance monitor for Weatherford International as well as counsel to the monitor in the first-ever FCPA monitorship by an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation,” the firm said.
Afework Bereket, former employee of Swedish telecommunications giant Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and dual citizen of Ethiopia and Sweden, was indicted for his alleged role in a bribery scheme to pay off government officials in Djibouti, the Department of Justice said Sept. 8. Bereket allegedly engaged in the scheme from 2010 to 2014 in which he served as Ericsson's account manager for the Horn of Africa. He purportedly bribed two high-level officials in the small African nation's executive branch and one at its state-owned telecommunications company to win a contract valued at around $24 million. The scheme involved Bereket and others allegedly leading an Ericsson subsidiary to enter into a fraudulent contract with a consulting company that then signed off on fake invoices to hide the bribe payments, DOJ said. The bribe payments were routed through bank accounts in the U.S. to hide the funds, it said.
Several U.S. and multinational companies recently disclosed potential U.S. sanctions violations or updated previous disclosures. The cases involve a destruction of evidence in a sanctions investigation, potentially illegal transactions with Iran, a gaming software company and others.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should review all U.S. investment transactions by Brazilian meatpacking conglomerate JBS S.A., its holding company J&F Investimentos and any entity owned by the company’s owners Wesley and Joesley Batista, two senators said. The companies use “criminal practices to obtain the funds to acquire U.S. companies,” which may jeopardize U.S. economic security and undermine U.S. efforts to combat corruption, Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in an Aug. 13 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “With JBS S.A. planning further U.S. acquisitions in the near future,” the senators said, “the need for a thorough investigation is urgent.”