The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is a United States federal law which addresses accounting transparency and bribery of foreign officials. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are both responsible for FCPA enforcement – the SEC, for those companies under its regulatory jurisdiction, and the DOJ, for all other companies. This enforcement famously leads to large settlement payments by offending companies, the resolution of which is often reached by collaboration among numerous governments and supervisory entities.
The ten largest FCPA resolutions as of the writing of this blog post are listed below, with links to more information and business case studies on each.
- SBM Offshore – SBM Offshore to Pay $238 Million to Resolve U.S. Bribe Case
- GlaxoSmithKline – Drug Giant Faced a Reckoning as China Took Aim at Bribery
- Teva Pharmaceuticals – Teva agrees $519m settlement of US anti-bribery charges
- Halliburton/KBR – The Corruption Premium
- VimpelCom – VimpelCom’s Landmark Bribery Settlement – By The Numbers
- Rolls-Royce – US prosecutors name five in Rolls-Royce corruption case
- Alstom – US judge sentences Alstom in bribery case, $772 mln fine
- Telia – Telia to Pay Nearly $1 billion to Settle Uzbek Bribery Claims
- Siemens – At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item
- Odebrecht/Braskem – One company has thrown politics in the Western Hemisphere completely off-kilter
Check out this Frontline series The Business of Bribes, which is a deep dive into the interests and impacts of international bribery.
Check back in the future for more posts on FCPA regulatory enforcement and other related topics of interest pertaining to compliance efforts against bribery and corruption.