High ranking officials in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on March 12 that companies that fail to self-report overseas bribes will face tougher Foreign Criminal Practices Act (FCPA) fines.
While speaking at the Georgetown Law Center Corporate Counsel Institute in Washington, Patrick Stokes, deputy chief of the DOJ’s FCPA Division, and Kara Brockmeyer, the SEC FCPA chief, both cited real-life examples of how companies that did not self-report foreign bribes received significantly higher fines and penalties.
Stokes pointed to French conglomerate Alstom SA, which paid $772 million in fines, the largest FCPA fine in history, for an Asian bribery scheme. Stokes stated that if Alstom SA had come forward and cooperated with the an investigation, prosecutors would have sought as little as $207 million in penalties, representing a 73% reduction from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. He stressed “measurable and clear” benefits of self-disclosure and cooperation and quipped “You don’t need a forensic accountant. You don’t need a law firm to do this.”…